THE 

CHRISTIAN’S DAY 
A BOOR OF 

MEDITATION S 


J.G.H.BARRY.D. D. 









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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 

























V 





THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


A BOOK OF MEDITATIONS 


BY 

THE REVEREND J. G. H. BARRY, D.D. 

M 

Author of 

Meditations on the Office and Work of the Holy Spirit 


NEW YORK 

EDWIN S. GORHAM, PUBLISHER 
igio 


13 

• B -3t> 


Copyright 

BY 

EDWIN S. GORHAM 
1910 


A280910 


Dedication 

TO THE 

SISTERS OF THE COMMUNITY OF S. MARY 
TO WHOSE KIND INVITATION TO 
AN UNKNOWN PRIEST 
TO CONDUCT A RETREAT 
IS DUE THE PREPARATION OF THESE 
MEDITATIONS 





PREFACE 


I have called this book “ The Christian’s Day ” 
because the matters treated in it are such as enter 
the daily experience of those who are trying to 
live a Christian life. The meditations here con¬ 
tained were prepared in the form of rough notes 
for a retreat that I gave for the Eastern associates 
of the Community of S. Mary at Peekskill some 
years ago. They have been used many times since 
as the basis for meditations at retreats and quiet 
days that I have been called on to give. It is al¬ 
ways unsatisfactory to work over old material for 
publication, and I am very sensible of a good deal 
of crudeness both of form and expression in these 
meditations as they are now printed; but as I am 
not sending them out as a literary exercise I have 
determined to let them stand as they are. Their 
crudeness is not of such a kind as will unfit them 
to become, what I publish them in the hope that 
they may become, aids to spiritual thoughts upon 
some common things of Christian experience. 

S. Mary’s Rectory, New York, 

December the First, 1910. 









































CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.— Prayer.3 

II.— Meditation.25 

III. — Temptation.49 

IV. — Repentance.71 

V.— Confession.91 

VI. — Relation to Others .119 

VII.— Work .151 

VIII.— Pain .177 

IX. — Discipline.199 

X.— The Supernatural.221 

XI. — Thanksgiving. 239 


















THE EIEST MEDITATION 


THE FIRST MEDITATION 

PRAYER 


Listen to the words of our Lord — 

gCJ ERILY I say unto you, except ye be con- 
00$ verted and become as little children, 
ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven.” 


Let us 'picture — 

A little child saying its morning prayers. It is 
kneeling down beside its mother repeating the 
words that she has taught it. It is speaking to 
God; and yet it sees God nowhere. It has abso¬ 
lute confidence that it is being heard. Mark its 
perfect trust in this unseen God. It is lifting a 
soul utterly unsullied to a God that loves purity. 
Try to realise the picture. 




4 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


Consider, first — 

That you have been that little child. There 
was a time when you knelt thus at your mother’s 
knee and spoke to God the words that she had 
taught you. You did not know very well what 
the words meant, hut you knew what the act 
meant — that you were asking One whom you 
could not see for his help and favor. Your 
childhood has gone rather dim now, hut some¬ 
thing of it comes back to you, does there not? 
You remember your mother, how her love guarded 
and followed you all her life. You can recall 
something of those early prayers, the perfect trust 
in God that was yours then. Try to recall what 
you were then, your love of your mother, your 
love of the good God of whom she taught you, 
the purity of your unstained soul. 

Consider , second — 

How far you are from all that to-day. The 
experience of years lies between. How your past 
drifts in shifting pictures across your conscious¬ 
ness to-day bringing to you fragments of long 
forgotten experience. The carelessness, the grow¬ 
ing neglect, the wilfulness, the sin, the gradual 
drift from God. What memories come up out of 
those years. And your prayers — what has be- 


PRAYER 


5 


come of them now? Try to realise your present 
state in regard to prayer. 

Pray — 

To be led back to that perfect trust in God that 
makes prayer a reality. Pray to recover the 
spirit of a little child, that spirit that was once 
yours. Cry earnestly for power to pray. O 
God, give me a prayerful spirit. O God, open 
thou my lips. 

Let thy merciful ears, O Lord, be open to the 
prayers of thy humble servants; and, that they 
may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such 
things as shall please thee; through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 


Morning by morning sleep drifts away and we 
come back to consciousness. It is a new day. 
As we awake, it may be that we hear the song 
of the birds in the tree outside our window. We 
see the flecks of sunlight on the wall and smell the 
fragrance of the flowers. There comes an inrush 
of glad life. How good it is just to be alive. 

And then memory awakes. A cloud settles 
upon us. For an instant we had forgotten the 
burden that makes life a weariness; the wearing 
pain, the sorrow, the failure. But it comes back, 


6 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


the anxiety for the sick child, the worry over the 
case of our friend. All the unsolved problems of 
life come back. The music dies out of the bird’s 
note, the sunshine fades — we have remembered. 
I am the same person that I was yesterday. 
There is no escape. 

Or we meet the sunlight with a burst of glad¬ 
ness. There are plans to be carried out this 
morning, so many things that we are eager to do, 
so many persons whom we are eager to see. 
What thronging interests there are calling us; 
joy, love, life await. The world is all aglow with 
happiness and the day all too short. The hours 
we have given to sleep seem lost. 

Or we awake just to humdrum duty with a 
“ middle-aged feeling.” We live because we 
have to live, but our life is colorless. We fear 
little, we hope little, we love little; and we have 
no expectation but that to-day will be as all the 
other days have been. 

But at least we awake Christians, and there¬ 
fore with the sense of a day given, a trust from 
God. It is not our time, but a loan, and contains 
in it a call to duty. We must first of all conse¬ 
crate the day. We arise with the consciousness 
that we are the children of God; we arise to 
prayer. A Christian’s day is built upon prayer. 
It is not that we pray at times during the day, 


PRAYER 


7 


but that the whole day is shot through with 
threads of prayer. 

There is nothing so easy as to say prayers; we 
are doing that every day. There are stated times 
in the day when we have accustomed ourselves to 
kneel and -repeat prayers. We know them so 
well, those prayers; we have been saying them 
for years. There is nothing so easy as to say 
prayers. There is nothing so hard as to pray. 
To speak out into the unknown and the silence 
with the certainty of being heard — that is a won¬ 
derful act of faith. The prayer of faith, how 
different that is from the easy patter of words 
that we often call prayer. 

Look back on your life; how have you fulfilled 
this duty of prayer? What has this splendid 
privilege meant to you? God has given you the 
right to speak to him at any time. If you wanted 
to speak to the president of the United States, or 
the president of some great corporation, with how 
much difficulty would the accomplishment of your 
purpose be attended? But God has promised to 
hear you at any time; the doors of heaven are 
always open. 

You have gone out of the church and seen chil¬ 
dren playing about the door and men loafing on 
the corner and the throng of the passing crowd 
going on indifferent, when all the time within, the 


8 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


prayers and praises of the church were going up 
about the Altar-throne of Christ, and you have 
wondered that all these that pass take no notice. 
But are you really very different? The doors 
of heaven are always open. How often do you 
enter? The songs of the Seraphs, the music of 
the Harpers harping with their harps, float out. 
How often do you pause to listen ? Prayer is the 
breath of a Christian’s life. Is it the breath of 
your life ? Is it that that supports you from day 
to day? 

We have tried to pray — so we enter our de¬ 
fense— we have kept a certain regularity in the 
practice. We certainly would never think of giv¬ 
ing it up; but there is, no doubt, a good deal that 
is unsatisfactory in our attainment. We are 
conscious of routine, for one thing; that we are 
carried on by the momentum of habit. We somo- 
times question whether, if the habit were un¬ 
formed, we should exert ourselves to acquire it. 
Por, when we think of our attainments in prayer, 
all sorts of questions suggest themselves. Are 
they not merely formal and, therefore, worthless ? 
Are they not so full of distraction as to render 
them valueless? Are they not so dull and dead 
that they must be unacceptable? And in any 
case, doubts arise about them. How can we ex¬ 
pect that God will answer prayer? Is it not 


PRAYER 


9 


mere impertinence to expect the infinite God to 
attend to the petition of such an one as myself? 
Here are a good many questions; let us think of 
some of them. 

You feel that your prayers are formal. Morn¬ 
ing and evening you kneel down and the familiar 
words arise to your lips and flow off the tongue 
with the smooth even flow of water down the 
quiet stream. By and by you will go about 
your work singing and if any ask, What is the 
song? you will answer, Was I singing? Your 
prayer, it seems, has been a prayer like that — 
of the lips, not of the heart. And there is so 
much to pray about with the heart. We need so 
much and have so much to be thankful for. With 
all these thronging needs, how is it that we are not 
swept away by the pressing longing for their ful¬ 
filment? God is so great and wonderful and 
the privilege of approaching him at all is so un¬ 
speakable that it is unthinkable that when we 
come into his presence we should be formal. 

The trouble, perhaps you thought, was that you 
were using a book and had got too much habitu¬ 
ated to a certain form of words, and you got a new 
book or gave up the use of a book altogether. Or 
it was because you did not use a book and you 
bought one with hopefulness that new forms 
would bring a new earnestness. But the trouble, 


10 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


you found after a little, was not there. Book or 
no book it is much the same thing. Formalism 
is not the result of using forms; formalism is a 
temper of mind. Formalism is, perhaps, not at 
all what you thought it. Formalism is a satis¬ 
faction with routine, with just keeping a rule. 
Mostly a formalist does not suspect himself of 
being such. What is commonly called formalism 
is usually something quite different. When one 
begins to suspect oneself of formalism one is well 
on the way to a cure. 

If you have been formal you have been satisfied 
with your attainment. Therefore it is always 
well to ask, 'Am I satisfied with the way in which 
I say my prayers? Do I stick to the same 
routine, never thinking of changing my form or 
of supplementing it with others, never experi¬ 
encing new needs that no form will cover, never 
driven to pour out my heart to God without think¬ 
ing or caring for the words in which I express 
myself, only eager to get my desire before God? 
In such a case realise that your needs are ever so 
much broader than your accustomed prayers. 
You pray so feebly because God is so little of a 
need in your daily life; you have not really 
learned to depend on him in all things: You 
have too little experience of God; you do not feel 
acutely enough God’s presence, God’s help, God’s 


PRAYER 


11 


gifts. You are going on your way without God. 
A formalist is usually a prosperous person whose 
life is smooth and easy and whose desires are 
gratified without much effort on his part. You 
need to find out your spiritual poverty, that 
you are poor and miserable and blind and 
naked, and then you will find passionate need of 
God. 

You want more love, love of God and love of 
your neighbor. And the best way to gain more 
of it is to practise it. There is no influence so 
broadening in the life of prayer as that of regu¬ 
lar intercession. The world is full of needs. 
You have only to open your eyes to see the eager 
child whom the evil that is in the world through 
lust is enticing; you can find the weary and 
heavy laden everywhere. The Church fighting its 
battle against the powers of Darkness is fighting 
them in the strength that comes through the 
prayers of its children. The tide of the battle 
that seems lost may be turned by prayer. If 
you are dull and stupid in your prayers throw 
yourself in to the life of others; come to the 
rescue of those that are weary and oppressed. 
Set apart a time for intercession; make it a part of 
your weekly routine; if you are in earnest about 
it, it will speedily kindle your dull faculties and 
sweep you out of your routine and overflow the 


12 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


allotted time. You will find yourself seeking 
for more time, learning to fill the chinks and cran¬ 
nies of your day with eager prayers that are as 
arrows shot up to God. Before you suspect it 
your formalism will have vanished. 

Then there is the ever-recurring trouble about 
distractions. There is nothing more common 
than that. We have so little control over our at¬ 
tention that we get through our prayers with dif¬ 
ficulty. And it seems such a terrible thing. 
Here we are, kneeling before God our Maker and 
Preserver. And we cannot so much as keep our 
minds fixed on the thing that we are doing. Put¬ 
ting ourselves in the presence of God we imme¬ 
diately forget him. Our thoughts run off — 
and on what? Trifles. Some little incident of 
the day; something that someone has said to us; 
some reply that we ought to have made and did 
not. Some plan for to-morrow. Or something 
that seems a very suggestion of the devil; some 
wandering thought of evil that drifts through the 
words of our prayers. Why is this? How can 
we put away God for such things? 

Well, perhaps it is not quite so bad as it looks. 
Distractions come, not because we have a deeper 
interest in other things than in God, but because 
we have a more vivid interest. Some plan interests 


PRAYER 


13 


us; some failure oppresses; there is a weight of 
sorrow or care. And after all, our minds can 
hold so little. We are certain that in it all we 
need God’s help, and we are trying to ask it — 
but thoughts throng us. Or we are just worn 
out and have not the physical vitality to keep our 
attention fixed on the thing in hand. Distrac¬ 
tions are often purely physical. 

There is need, of course, of the constant dis¬ 
cipline of the thoughts. Host of us have had 
our minds ruined, or near it, by an education 
that never taught us control and concentration. 
We were not given habits of attention to any¬ 
thing when our mind was being formed. So it 
is not strange that we have not the habit of at¬ 
tention in prayer. Now it is a matter of hard 
work — the learning of the habit of prayer. We 
must begin at the beginning with the attempt to 
acquire a keener consciousness of the presence of 
God, and of what reverence requires of us in that 
presence. We must begin our prayers with a 
certain effort at recollectedness, not beginning at 
all till we have succeeded in placing ourselves 
consciously in the presence of God. We shall 
relax no effort to attain perfect recollectedness. 
But we shall not be too much downcast in the 
frequent case of failure. Remember, the val¬ 
uable thing in our prayers is the offering of the 


14 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


will. We cannot control thought perfectly so that 
it shall never wander; but we can control the will. 
When you find that the mind has run off and the 
prayers are left far behind, then recall the mind 
and go on — perhaps with an act of reparation, 
or a repetition of the last prayer. It is sometimes 
possible to steady the mind by the use of some ma¬ 
terial aid. A picture or the Crucifix will often 
help us to concentration. If they help do not be 
afraid to use them. 

A trouble that gives us more of perplexity and 
causes us more searching of heart is dryness. Its 
characteristic is an utter distaste for devotion. I 
feel myself dead to all its practices and sugges¬ 
tions. I drag wearily through prayers in which I 
feel no interest and would much rather not say. 
I go to services and the only joy that I get is the 
joy that they are over. All spirituality seems 
to have vanished from my life. It is a terrible 
state; but there is this of encouragement about 
it, that it is the temptation of those who have 
made some progress in the spiritual life. It seems 
that we are utterly indifferent to God; but if we 
were so, in fact, we should not in the least care. 
It seems that there is no such thing as the love of 
God in us; but if that were true we should not be 
troubled about dryness. It is just because we 


PRAYER 


15 


really care for God that the silence of God is so 
terrible. 

But it is a trial that has its own peculiar dan¬ 
gers. It brings us the great temptation to relax, 
to give up. What is the use of going on in this 
state; of saying prayers that have no heart in 
them, of taking part in worship which, so far as 
we are concerned, is of the lips only ? Is it not a 
profanation to receive sacraments when we find no 
desire for them or response to them in our lives ? 
Will it not be better for me to drop all the ex¬ 
ternal practices of religion and wait till I am in a 
better state to resume them? No: all that is the 
mere suggestion of Satan. We never learn any¬ 
thing by cutting ourselves off from the considera¬ 
tion of the subject we wish to know. We never 
learn to love people by keeping away from them. 
Nor shall we learn to love God by that method. 
Stop your prayers and you will only grow the 
colder in regard to the practice. 

We are tempted to think that this coolness that 
we experience is a punishment sent us from God. 
God is angry and has withdrawn himself. There 
is much danger in such morbid dwelling upon our 
faults as being so great that they have driven God 
away. That is not the way that God treats sin¬ 
ners. It was because of our faults that Christ 
died for us. Examine yourself carefully and re- 


16 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


pent of your faults, but do not dwell morbidly 
upon them. Let us again remember that the test 
of our devotion is the will. We are wont to think 
that it is the emotions. We conclude that when 
we feel good we are good, which is by no means 
always the case. We like to feel the pleasant glow 
of emotion; the warmth of conscious joy and peace 
and love and gratitude. We like to feel that our 
Lord is very near to us. But that is the luxury of 
religion and we have no right to expect luxuries. 
The trouble is that people may feel all that and 
be very little affected by it. It is not uncom¬ 
mon for people to be affected, even to tears, by 
some devotional book, or a sermon, the lessons of 
which they never dream of putting into practice. 
Our Lord did not put the test in the emotions, but 
in the will. Not he who feels the beauty of my 
teaching, but who doeth my will, shall know of 
my doctrine. After all, the aroused feelings are 
but the loaves and fishes of the Gospel. And they 
are largely a matter of temperament; the cold per¬ 
son that is rarely moved emotionally may have 
much the better will. “ Devotion is simply the 
prompt and ardent disposition of the will to good. 
True devotion and fervor of spirit do not consist 
in any sensible emotion experienced in prayer, 
but they consist in having the will always disposed 
and always ready to everything which is to the 


PRAYER 


17 


glory and service of God .’ 7 The feelings are alto¬ 
gether deceitful; examine yourself not by them, 
but by your obedience. 

Can you obey, steadily and persistently, what¬ 
ever the feeling? Can you keep on in the per¬ 
formance of duty however remote God seems ? It 
is easy to serve God when all goes smoothly, when 
the skies are bright and the world smiles and we 
are successful; but when the sky is overcast and 
the clouds lower and God seems to withdraw his 
face and there is no conscious joy in service, then 
will we serve? There is the only adequate test. 
And it is a test that we must he ready for: God 
applies it to all. 

Does God answer prayer? I suppose that all 
Christians can answer out of their own experience 
that he does. There is nothing on which there is 
a fuller consensus of opinion than upon that fact. 
And yet there come to most of us moments of 
doubt induced either by the present failure of our 
own prayers or by the strong assertions which we 
read that alleged answers to prayer will not stand 
examination and are, at most, no more than coinci¬ 
dence. 

It is well to attend to our Lord’s rule in this 
matter. Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven 
and its righteousness. Perhaps a good many 


18 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


prayers remain unanswered because we are seeking 
temporal things and have never cared much about 
the spiritual ones. Perhaps if we first prayed for 
conversion of the will and detachment from the 
world and patience and purity and so on, we 
should be heard, and then the other things added 
in their order. “ God often denies the temporal 
things, since without the spiritual, they would 
prove not only prejudicial but even injurious. We 
murmur and complain that God is unfaithful to 
his promises. But let us remember that our God 
is a good Father, who would rather endure our 
complaints and murmurs than quiet and console us 
with pernicious gifts.” 

God always answers prayer, we say. Perhaps 
it would be better to say that he always attends 
to prayer, and does what is best for us. All 
prayer rightly offered is offered in subjection to 
God’s will and with the implied condition that the 
thing asked is for the best. The withholding of 
what is not best is therefore a true answer to 
prayer. We can all, I suppose, look back in our 
own experience and see that there have been 
prayers which, had they been answered, as we 
wanted them answered would have been very harm¬ 
ful to us. We wanted them so very much and 
we were so hurt and discouraged because we did 
not get them; but now we thank God for his wis- 


PRAYER 


19 


dom and love in withholding them. We may be 
certain that the same thing is true in other cases 
that we do not see, and over which we are perhaps 
grieving at present. 

Delay is not refusal. Do not be impatient like 
the child that must be answered at once. Suppose 
you do pray for a long time. God, you may be 
sure, is listening to you and doing what is best for 
you. It is right for you to persist as long as you 
think that the thing you pray for is a right and 
good thing to have. But be willing to submit if 
God thinks otherwise. 

There is a further perplexity that besets us in 
these days. We feel the pressure of a certain kind 
of speculation. We have come now to understand 
something of the greatness of the universe. When 
the universe was, so far as man’s knowledge went, 
relatively small, and the earth was the center of 
it, man might not unnaturally think of God as 
concerning himself in a special way with the af¬ 
fairs of the world; but in the light of our present 
knowledge which reduces the earth to a place of 
insignificance in the universe, we can hardly flatter 
ourselves that we can be the special objects of the 
divine attention. Moreover, we now know that the 
universe is an orderly system acting in accordance 
with fixed laws; it is sheer impertinence to sup¬ 
pose that those laws are going to be altered that 


20 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


we may avoid some disagreeable effects of them. 
Is the universe to be thrown out of order and its 
laws suspended to gratify the wish of a farmer 
who wants rain, or of a little child who wants a 
pleasure, or even of a man who wants the life of 
one dear to him ? The order of the world and the 
interference of prayer are incompatible. 

But argument of this sort sounds much more 
formidable than it actually is. Both the farmer 
and the child and all the rest of us are constantly 
interfering with the order of nature in the same 
sense that prayer assumes to do; and if we can 
interfere, it is a little difficult to see why God may 
not. “ The supposition that there is any inconsis¬ 
tency in the acceptance of the constancy of natural 
order and a belief in the efficacy of prayer is 
the more unaccountable as it is obviously contra¬ 
dicted by analogies furnished by every day experi¬ 
ence. The belief in the efficacy of prayer depends 
upon the assumption that there is somebody, some¬ 
where, who is strong enough to deal with the 
earth and its contents as men deal with the things 
and events which they are strong enough to modify 
and control; and who is capable of being moved 
by appeals such as men make to one another.” 

What do we mean by the omniscience of God? 
Surely, not just that God knows everything that 
happens; or that God foreknows everything that 


PRAYER 


21 


is going to happen. But that all that happens 
happens by God’s will, and that he knows all 
things in their causes. He foreknows that it will 
rain here on a certain day, and why; that is, he 
knows all the causes that will enter into the pro¬ 
duction of the rain at the given time. He fore¬ 
knows that I shall die on a certain day, and all 
the causes that will meet for the production of 
my death. He foreknows that you will receive 
the grace of conversion and accept or reject it, and 
why. 

]STow one of the whys, one of the causes that en¬ 
ter into the production of events, is prayer. The 
presence or the absence of your prayer has been 
foreseen and has determined the event — the rain, 
the death, the conversion and so forth. Prayer, 
therefore, is not an impertinence, a disorderly ele¬ 
ment in an otherwise orderly universe, but is a 
part of its order. 

But then a terrible thought comes hack to us: 
what losses there may have been through the fail¬ 
ure of my intercession. God gave me the duty to 
intercede and I failed of my duty. We struggle 
against this conviction and say, God would not 
let the welfare of others, their gain or loss depend 
thus on me. But is not that precisely what God 
is doing all the time ? Does not the welfare of 
the state depend on the fidelity of those who are 


22 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


placed in its responsible positions ? Does not the 
health of the community depend on the taking of 
certain precautions? The carelessness of a milk 
dealer may mean an epidemic of fever. Does not 
the comfort of a family depend on the father’s 
care — his honesty or sobriety? Does not the 
happiness of the mother depend on the conduct 
of the child? There is no need to multiply in¬ 
stances. To make the welfare of one depend on 
the conduct of another is just what God is doing 
all the time. Why, then, should not the welfare 
of others, their gain or their loss, depend on your 
prayers ? 

Think, then, of the possible loss through your 
neglect of intercession. Loss to the kingdom of 
God, to the parish, to your friends and family. 
What losses might have been averted, what con¬ 
versions wrought, what progress made in the king¬ 
dom if you had fulfilled your duty of prayer. 

Let us come back to this: that we beseech God 
to give us grace to realise the obligation, the 
privilege, the responsibility of prayer, and to ful¬ 
fil it more perfectly. 

0 God, open thou my lips. 


THE SECOND MEDITATION 








THE SECOND MEDITATION 

MEDITATION 

Listen to the words of the Prophet EzeJciel — 

OW it came to pass in the thirtieth year, 
in the fourth month, in the first day of 
the month, as I was among the captives 
by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were 
opened and I saw visions of God.” 

Let us picture — 

The Jews in captivity in Babylonia, far from 
their own land. The work of the day is over and 
they sit in the evening light by the river side 
mourning over their sad condition. By the waters 
of Babylon we sat down and wept when we re¬ 
membered thee, O Sion. Others, perhaps, forget¬ 
ful of God are, as they say, making the best of cir- 
25 





26 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


cumstances. They are adjusting themselves to the 
land of their captivity and will become prosperous 
citizens there. But to others such a course seems 
infidelity to all that Israel has stood for, to all 
the promises that God has made to her. To these, 
no doubt, whether they think of ruined Sion or 
of themselves in their present evil case, the fu¬ 
ture is covered with clouds; but they are not ut¬ 
terly without hope. God seems to have forsaken 
them; but when they remember his promises, they 
cannot persuade themselves that that forsaking is 
final. And to one among them the heavens open 
and he sees visions of God. God is not only visi¬ 
ble in Sion; he is visible among the captives of 
Chebar. God is visible to all eyes that have ca¬ 
pacity of vision. 

Consider, first — 

The vision of God is possible to you. Hot, 
perhaps, the sight of one seated upon a throne 
of sapphire, cherub-borne and terrible; but the 
vision that is seen by pure hearts of one speaking 
across the troubled waters of life and saying, 
“ Come unto me.” Though we dwell in the world 
among those who are bound captive by sin, heed¬ 
less or despairing of any God at all, still, our 
minds being spiritually enlightened and our eyes 
spiritually trained, we may see the curtains of 


MEDITATION 


27 


heaven draw back and may look through and see 
visions of God. God is visible to all eyes that 
have capacity of vision. 

Consider, second — 

That capacity for vision is a matter of spiritual 
discipline. The soul sees what it is trained to 
see, what, in a way, it wants to see. The reason 
of Ezekiel’s vision, why it came to Ezekiel and 
not to another man, is to be found, no doubt, in 
the preceding life of the prophet. He had 
trained his eye to see and his ear to hear and his 
mind to respond. He was no stranger to the 
thought of God, therefore it was not strange that 
God should appear to his spiritualised thought. 
God is visible to all eyes that have capacity of 
vision. 

Let us, then, pray — 

Eor the power of vision. The last words of a 
dying saint were, “ Lord, open unto me, Lord, open 
unto me.” Let us cry now to God, “ Open unto 
me, that I may see.” The pure in heart shall see 
God. 

Almighty and Merciful God, unto whose ever¬ 
lasting blessedness we ascend, not by the frailty 
of the flesh, but by the activity of the soul; make 


28 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


us ever, by thy inspiration, to seek after the 
courts of the heavenly city, and, by thy mercy, 
confidently to enter them; through Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 

In the preceding meditation we were thinking 
of prayer and its difficulties and its obligations; 
we did not, perhaps, touch upon its joys and its 
privileges as much as we might have done. In¬ 
deed, we are very far, in other respects, from hav¬ 
ing exhausted the subject. Especially there is one 
kind of prayer that we have not touched upon and 
of which the importance demands that we give it 
separate attention. This is meditation, or, as it 
is sometimes called, mental prayer, because of the 
predominance and leadership of the intellect 
in it. 

The condition of our spiritual activity, of our 
being spiritually alive at all, is that we live near 
God. Words are inadequate to express this near¬ 
ness, but everyone who has a real spiritual ex¬ 
perience will understand without explanation. 
They know what it is to keep God continually pres¬ 
ent to the life, and the life constantly in the 
sight of God. God dwells in us by virtue of our 
incorporation into Christ at our Baptism. We 
are never separated from God except by the awful 
fact of mortal sin; but we are strangely able to 


MEDITATION 


29 


go through life with little consciousness of him. 
The spiritual life is the becoming conscious of 
God as present with us and the conduct that must 
certainly flow from that consciousness. We can¬ 
not be any nearer God than we are but we can 
come to know our nearness. Those brief mo¬ 
ments when we know God’s nearness can become 
frequent and our knowledge of him habitual. It 
is the practice of meditation that helps, perhaps 
more than any other practice, to make us habitually 
conscious of the divine presence. 

Meditation is the putting of the mind into re¬ 
lation to some truth in order to understand it 
and see its bearing upon our lives and to get an 
impulse from it that shall lead us to action. It 
is an attempt to let truth influence us wholly. 
We try, therefore, to look all about a truth, to see 
it in all its bearings and from all sides. We may 
think that we are familiar with a truth when, in 
fact, we are familiar with it only from one point 
of view. There are others ways of looking at it 
that we have not yet learned and which, when we 
learn them, will prove immensely helpful. 

But meditation is not for the satisfaction of 
intellectual curiosity. It is spiritual understand¬ 
ing that we are seeking. What we are engaged 
in is an act of prayer. We might put it in this 
way: Ordinary prayer is an expression of our 


30 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


attitude toward God; meditation is an apprecia¬ 
tion of God’s attitude toward us. That, of course, 
is an incomplete statement, for an appreciation 
of God’s attitude toward us will at once call out 
an answer from us in appropriate action. 

This implies hard work, and if we have been 
accustomed to think of prayer as anything else 
than that we need a new attitude. A good many 
people have an idea of the spiritual as of some¬ 
thing hazy, dreamy, sentimental. They think of 
it as the reverse of the practical; and it comes to 
them with something like a shock to be told that 
spiritual development and the power of prayer and 
the enjoyment of the sacraments is to be won by 
downright hard work; that the solid foundation 
of prayer is sheer intellectual effort — effort to 
understand what God is, what we are, and what 
our relations are. Personal religion is anything 
but dreamy sentiment. Bishop Hamilton said, 
“Ho man is likely to do much at prayer who 
does not begin by looking at it in the light of a 
work to be prepared for and persevered in with 
all the earnestness we bring to bear upon sub¬ 
jects which are, in our opinion, at once most in¬ 
teresting and most necessary.” Coleridge said, 
“ Earnest prayer is the most severe of all mental 
exercises.” Our Blessed Lord says, “ The king- 


MEDITATION 


31 


dam of heaven suffereth violence and the violent 
take it by force.” 

Let us get the point of view then that prayer, 
and especially the prayer of meditation, is mental 
work. If God makes it easy for us and gives us 
great satisfaction in it, so much the better; that 
is a special grace, hut we must not count upon 
it. There are times when the gardener may 
stand in his doorway and see the rain fall and 
water his plants without effort of his. There are 
other times when, if his plants are not to die, he 
must water them with great labor. 

Meditation, I said, is the putting of the mind 
into relation to some truth; but it is putting much 
more than the mind; it is the putting of the whole 
personality. Our personality contains these ele¬ 
ments, the memory, the intellect and the will. In 
any intelligent act all these are brought into play 
in greater or less degree. One or the other of 
them may be so dominant as to obscure the others; 
but the others are still acting. In an act of medi¬ 
tation all these elements of personality play their 
part, but at one moment one is dominant, at an¬ 
other, another, in such wise that they seem to act 
successively, and for our present purpose they may 
be treated as though that were the fact. 

Let us approach our subject by way of an ex- 


32 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


ample. Suppose that the subject of our medita¬ 
tion is to be the very common sin of anger. We 
will begin by an exercise of the memory. We re¬ 
call what we know about the subject. What does 
the Holy Scripture say about anger ? We can re¬ 
call numerous cases from Cain down in which it is 
the subject of the teaching of Scripture. We re¬ 
member God’s attitude towards it. Then we re¬ 
call our own personal experience; we have been 
angry a good many times, perhaps it is an habitual 
sin with us at least in some of its minor forms. 
We are easily irritated; we are put out if we fail 
to get our own way; we are fretful against the 
ordinary accidents of life; we complain a good 
deal; we cannot see why people cannot shut doors, 
or why other people’s children do not behave better. 
On the whole the more we look into it the worse 
it becomes and we begin to be ashamed of our¬ 
selves. 

Then let the understanding take up the facts 
as the memory presents them and investigate them. 
We begin to go into the causes of our anger; and 
if we are not careful the causes will become ex¬ 
cuses. But avoiding that, let us go as deep into 
the subject as we can, and make the attempt to 
see it from every possible angle. The meaning 
of a truth is not so easy to get at; but we get at 
it the more clearly the more light we get on it. 


MEDITATION 


33 


In each new relation in which we look at it we 
gain new understanding of it, we are able to draw 
new conclusions from it. When we feel that we 
really understand our truth as much as we are 
likely to we can pass on to the judgment of our own 
action in the light of it. In the light of what we 
now see to be God’s will we can take stock of our¬ 
selves, of our failures and successes. 

And then having got clear the truth and our 
state in relation to it the will steps in. It ac¬ 
cepts this truth as its guide. It renounces its 
errors and failures. It abhors its sin. It sur¬ 
renders itself. It makes acts of contrition and 
love. It ends by resolving that the truth shall 
rule henceforth. It determines to avoid this sin 
in the future. Thus all our powers are exercised 
and are all brought to consecrated service. With 
all our powers fixed on God and the service of God, 
we are engaged in what is one of the most prac¬ 
tical forms of prayer. 

From this slight sketch, we can, perhaps, see 
how valuable the regular practice of meditation is 
likely to be. Indeed I am inclined to think that it 
would be difficult to overestimate its value. As 
one’s experience of it deepens, this conviction 
deepens. As a developing and formative force in 
the conduct of the spiritual life it is unequaled. 
It is wonderful to see how the life is purified and 


34 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


strengthened and advanced in sanctity as the re¬ 
sult of the habitual practice of mental prayer. 
Those who have become rather disheartened about 
their spiritual progress; who seem to themselves to 
have become spiritually stagnant; who feel no re¬ 
action to the grace of the sacraments, if once they 
can be induced to give themselves whole-heartedly 
to the prayer of meditation, find in no long time, 
their life brightened and purified, and their souls 
once more going with joy along the path of holi¬ 
ness. 

Meditation has this influence, because, among 
other things, it aids us to the knowledge of God. 
Our ordinary thought of God is superficial. It 
takes God for granted as acting in ways that are 
no doubt right, but are certainly very mysterious. 
Or, if we arrive at a surer knowledge of God and 
his works, we are apt to content ourselves with a 
manual of theology and a purely intellectual ap¬ 
preciation. But in meditation we seek to learn 
of God from God himself. All the facts about 
God that we are learning or recalling, we are 
learning or recalling as those who are consciously 
in his presence and looking to him for guidance. 
We are expecting, and we are right in expecting, 
to be led by the Spirit of Truth. This spiritual 
attitude, eager to know and submissive to be led, 
is the attitude of faith to which God finds it easy 


MEDITATION 


35 


to reveal himself; it is the attitude in which we 
find it easy to hear God and understand; such med¬ 
itation is spiritual study performed under the direct 
invocation of the Holy Spirit and in the sub¬ 
missive and devotional frame of mind which, bet¬ 
ter than any other, makes such study profitable. 

Meditation brings, too, a deeper knowledge of 
self; for it brings self into the most intimate con¬ 
tact with the will of God, and analyses all our 
actions in the light of God’s truth. It is the 
most searching form of self-examination. It is 
not that languid, over-look of the life, with the aid 
of some familiar set of questions, the very famil¬ 
iarity of which constitutes an obstacle to any very 
profound self-knowledge and prevents us from see¬ 
ing ourselves from any fresh and stimulating point 
of view. Still less is it that mere arrangement of 
habitual sins which we know we must have com¬ 
mitted which is apt to be the preliminary of a 
confession. Ho: the self-examination which takes 
place in meditation is a microscopic survey of 
a small section of life. It is an attempt to ap¬ 
preciate our attitude in thought and action to¬ 
ward some one truth that we are contemplating in 
all the bearings upon our life, to deepen and 
freshen our knowledge of some one truth, to see 
it under new aspects and with novel applications, 
to have one’s own obligations to the truth made 


36 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


clear to one, and to have one’s failings brought 
home. We get deeper than the perception of acts 
as being sins, we see the nature of the failure that 
is involved in them, and the kind of loss that is 
their consequence. 

And as an immediate result, we are prepared 
for more profitable petitions; for petitions to be 
profitable must be more intelligent, the better we 
understand our needs, the better we can bring 
the force of prayer to bear upon them. Some¬ 
one has said: “ If you wish to learn to pray and 

ask of God what you need, exercise yourself in 
considering exactly your faults and your weak¬ 
nesses, and when you shall have a perfect knowl¬ 
edge of them, then you will know what you ought 
to ask. And, like a man pressed by necessity and 
wretchedness, you will ask with all the insistence 
and ardor that you ought.” This is the state of 
mind that comes easiest as the result of the prac¬ 
tice of mental prayer. 

This practice, too, leads us,— nay, compels us, 
to action. From the perception of truth, and our 
own failures and shortcomings in relation to it; 
from the clearer understanding of our obligations 
to God, and God’s demands; from an appreciation 
of God’s goodness and mercy, not now as abstract 
truths, but as seen in our own experience; from 
the appeal to our loyalty and self-sacrifice which 


MEDITATION 


37 


is perceptible in any view of our Lord’s life and 
work; we draw impulse, energy, enthusiasm, ea¬ 
gerness. We rise from our meditation to meet the 
duties and opportunities of the day in that reso¬ 
lute and hopeful spirit that is the outcome of the 
possession of a vividly present faith in ourselves 
as the fellow-workers with God. 

And as, slowly, day by day, with our increas¬ 
ing devotional experience, we penetrate deeper 
into the inexhaustible meaning of the word God; 
as we catch some little glimpses of what God is 
himself; as we see him unveiled to us in the 
work of our Lord; as we learn of his actions in 
the life of the church and in our own experience; 
we are drawn to a deeper and purer worship of 
God, an out-pouring of ourselves in praise and 
adoration. Surely, if the process that I have 
been tracing is even approximately true, we can¬ 
not fail to be unspeakably profited by the steady 
practice of mental prayer. And one does not rely 
only on one’s own personal experience when one 
insists on the immense helpfulness of this prac¬ 
tice. One is simply repeating the experience of 
the saints. They tell us that this is the most 
effective form of prayer. A holy man said: “ I 

always know what the day is going to be from 
my morning prayer. If it be well made, the day 
will answer to the beginning; but when it is badly 


38 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


made, the whole day is out of joint.” St. Au¬ 
gustine said: “ He knows how to live rightly, 

who knows how to pray rightly.” 

Perhaps, with a view to the needs of those who 
are hut beginning the practice of meditation, I 
may be more explicit as to method. And in the 
first place, there can be no doubt that the morn¬ 
ing is in every way the preferable time. Hewly 
risen, and with our customary morning prayer 
said, and before the cares and labors of the day 
have intervened to fill the mind with distracting 
thoughts, we come with fresh minds and atten¬ 
tion as yet unwearied, to place ourselves in the 
presence of God, to let him bring to us the mes¬ 
sage that we need for the day that we are soon 
going out to meet. Later in the day, to be sure, 
it is possible to make the meditation, but I am 
sure that all who have experience will tell us that 
later in the day we have lost something of our 
power of concentration and receptiveness, that we 
find it more difficult to withdraw ourselves from 
the pressure of life and be alone with God. Of 
course one realises that the early morning is to 
some a time impossible, and one would not say 
anything to discourage such from making their 
meditation later — even in the evening, which is 
the most difficult time of all. Only one feels the 
need to warn those who think the morning im- 


MEDITATION 


39 


practicable when really it is not. There are so 
many difficulties which are really not difficulties 
of circumstances, but difficulties of thought. 
Oftentimes the supposed impossibility of the 
morning meditations can be met by fifteen minutes 
earlier rising — surely not a very difficult matter 
for one who is really eager to meet God. But 
the meditation should not be hurried or dis» 
tracted, and if the quiet time cannot be secured 
then, let it be made later. 

And as to length: It seems to me that fifteen 
minutes is an irreducible minimum. If the medi¬ 
tation is to be written it is better that it should be 
a little longer. But let us say, fifteen minutes 
of clear time for the meditation — not including 
the preparation or closing prayer. This time, 
conscientiously used day by day, is sufficient to 
insure steady progress in the spiritual life. A 
wise director has said: “Fifteen minutes a day, 
rightly used, is sufficient to make a saint.” 

I am inclined to think that the most difficult 
form of meditation is meditation upon the text of 
scripture. Many people I know, read a passage 
of scripture and then spend some time in think¬ 
ing it over. This is not meditation in the sense 
in which I have been discussing it, and if the re¬ 
sults which may be expected from meditation fol¬ 
low from this process it is because a great deal 


40 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


of skill has been previously acquired. A medi¬ 
tation is not just pious dreaming, but severe men¬ 
tal and spiritual work, and I do not believe that 
many people can take a passage of scripture and 
by an immediate analysis so present its meaning 
to tbeir minds as to make a profitable meditation. 
It is, I am convinced, because they have attempted 
to meditate in this manner and have obtained no 
results that so many say that they do not find 
meditation helpful. 

The use of scripture as a basis for meditation 
requires the previous preparation of an outline 
of the course of thought that we are to follow; 
an analysis of the passage we propose to use with 
the beads of thought and the deduced lessons; 
otherwise we shall merely lose time in vague im¬ 
aginings, or find that we have used all our al¬ 
lotted time in getting the subject presented, with¬ 
out really getting to the act of prayer at all. 
Moreover, it is not everyone who can make a help¬ 
ful outline of meditations, and for a busy person 
it is an important item that the time required is 
more than doubled. By all means, if you can, 
make your own outlines from the Bible, but of 
those who ought to practise meditation, only a 
small per cent have the combined opportunity and 
ability to do so. To insist on what is no doubt 
the ideal at the expense of the exclusion of many 


MEDITATION 


41 


souls from a most helpful spiritual discipline is 
worse than foolish, it is criminal. There are for¬ 
tunately plenty of books of meditations and out¬ 
lines of meditations specially prepared to meet 
the needs of the beginner and the busy person; 
and it is much better for the beginner and the 
busy person to use such helps than to be turned 
away from mental prayer by the fact that they 
cannot use a more exacting method. 

The same sort of advice may be given in re¬ 
gard to another point when too advanced teach¬ 
ing leads to discouragement and failure. It is 
strongly held by some that mental prayer should 
dispense with such an aid as writing; that we 
should learn to concentrate our mind on the sub¬ 
ject and follow the development and application 
by a sustained effort of the attention. Now my 
experience has brought me into contact with quan¬ 
tities of persons, who, when questioned as to 
whether they practised meditation, replied that 
they had tried and failed. The cause of the fail¬ 
ure has usually been found to be a lack of a cer¬ 
tain kind of mental training, such as enables one 
to hold the attention fixed upon a given subject for 
an indefinite time. Such persons had usually 
been advised not to use outlines, and always ad¬ 
vised not to write their meditations. In my 
opinion that is a vast mistake. Again, it is the 


42 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


sacrifice of numbers of souls who are seeking spir¬ 
itual development to an ideal of method. The 
object of meditation is — not to conform to a cer¬ 
tain method, but to exercise the spiritual powers, 
and method must be adapted to the need of the 
individual case. I believe that in far the greater 
number of cases, for a considerable time at least, 
and until a large measure of experience and fa¬ 
cility has been acquired, it is much better to write 
the meditation. It prevents that vague and hazy 
dreaming about a subject that spells failure to 
so many who attempt the practice. To write one’s 
meditation insures a fixety of attention which is 
not easily gained otherwise, and gives definite¬ 
ness and precision to thought which would other¬ 
wise tend to lose all effectiveness for lack, pre¬ 
cisely, of those qualities. 

To the beginner who is unused to sustaining 
intellectual and spiritual effort, I would say then: 
Get a book of outlines of meditations. You may 
have to experiment for some time before you find 
the book that suits your case. Do not be discour¬ 
aged if the first book you get does not prove help¬ 
ful ; but remember, too, that the lack of helpfulness 
may be due to your lack of skill, which will be over¬ 
come with a little persistence. Then choosing 
some time, in the morning by preference, and 
having said your preliminary prayers for guid- 


MEDITATION 


43 


ance of the Holy Spirit, sit down and read over 
your first point and then write your own thoughts 
upon it. Do not begin with the feeling that you 
have got to get through this particular outline in 
the morning’s meditation. Write without thought 
of what is to follow, and write till you find your 
mind run dry, and then, and not till then, go on 
to the next point. If what you have to think of 
in the first point exhausts your time, stop and 
take up the outline at that place to-morrow. If 
you find that you can make nothing out of a point, 
leave it and go on to the next. And do not be¬ 
lieve the books that tell you that the fruitfulness 
of a meditation depends upon your arriving at 
some resolution that you are to carry out during 
the day or the week. Ho such resolution may 
naturally result from your morning’s meditation. 
But the meditation is not therefore fruitless. 
You may well have obtained valuable spiritual 
guidance and stimulus even though it may not 
come in the form of a resolution. Meditation is 
an aid not an end. 

It is my experience that many people, while ad¬ 
mitting the helpfulness of the practice of medita¬ 
tion, excuse themselves from following it on the 
ground of the lack of time. When one talks to 
even very good people of the practices of the 
spiritual life they often turn out to be ex- 


44 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


traor dinar ily occupied. Now, it is well to be¬ 
ware of merely thinking that you have no time; 
to have time for anything that we really need 
to do is usually merely a matter of adjust¬ 
ment — a matter of what it is worth while to take 
in and what exclude from life. If you must econ¬ 
omise time, do not do it in your devotions. “ If 
you were a man of business you would not talk in 
that way,” it is said; “ a busy business man has 
no time to make meditations.” “ If you were a 
wife and mother,” I am sometimes told, “you 
would understand how impossible it is to get 
time for meditation.” But on the other hand, it 
was a very busy man who said, “ I have a hard 
day’s work before me; I do not see how I can 
get through with less than two hours of prayer.” 
Can the hard-worked business man, can the wife 
and mother, get successfully through their day 
without much prayer? Can life be conducted 
successfully on the basis of prayerlessness ? Is 
not the weakness of the Christian community to¬ 
day precisely its materialism; its attempt — its 
foolish and profane attempt — to get on with only 
so much of spiritual practice as will not in any 
degree interfere with the habits of the business 
man or the head of a household? Must we not 
insist that, if we are to be saved as a spiritual 
community at all, we must find time at whatever 


MEDITATION 1 


45 


of sacrifice, for more of divine and personal inter¬ 
course with God whether it be through meditation 
or otherwise? 

It is a difficult matter to believe in the serious¬ 
ness and earnestness of people who, out of the twen¬ 
ty-four hours of the day cannot find fifteen minutes 
for God. Religion cannot have very much value in 
their experience; they can never have felt its 
power in life; they have never understood what 
it means to gain material things and lose the 
soul. I cannot find time for my prayers means, 
I cannot find time for my salvation; means, I do 
not care whether God is in my life or no; there are 
things that I want more than I want God. 

And of course people who do not pray (as dis¬ 
tinguished from the routine saying of set pray¬ 
ers) are unfamiliar with the deeper joys of re¬ 
ligion. They may very well find spiritual prac¬ 
tices a bore; and be facile in excuses that relieve 
them from the pressure of them. How should one 
be familiar with God who keeps away from him 
as much as possible ? How should any one know 
the meaning of religion who has never sacrificed 
anything for it, but on the contrary, has made it 
the least interest in life? Think of your own 
life, what effort do you make to have God a part 
of it ? Have you much religion beyond perfunc¬ 
tory religious practices? You are a very respec- 


46 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


table person, no doubt, but are you a saint? 
That is God’s will for you — is it not — your sanc¬ 
tification ? That is what God is going to ask you 
at your death — is it not — Are you a saint? 
Not, have you been a much-occupied business man; 
not, have you been a hard-worked head of a fam¬ 
ily ; but are you a saint ? That is, have you lived 
in a state of grace — increasing grace ? 

Think of what life may become just by being 
brought into contact day by day with God — laid 
at God’s feet, morning by morning, to stand as 
it were, for a few moments each day in the pres¬ 
ence of God, listening to his word to us, and then 
to go out into the world in the strength of that 
Presence! We think, perhaps, at times, if it 
could only be ours to look just for a moment into 
our Blessed Lord’s face, as the Apostles could, 
and then to go to our work, it would all be so 
much easier for us. But that is precisely what 
we can do. We can go as really into our Lord’s 
presence, we can close our eyes and see him 
with our spirit, we can feel his nearness and 
be assured of his guidance. And the strength 
and the joy of it! 


THE THIRD MEDITATION 






THE THIRD MEDITATION 

TEMPTATION 

Let us listen to the words of Satcm — 

LL these things will I give thee, if thou 
wilt fall down and worship me.” 

Let us picture — 

The wilderness of the temptation. It is a bar¬ 
ren and desolate place, a waste of stones and 
sand overarched by a burning sky. Imagine the 
loneliness of it, and how it grew more lonely to 
our Lord as day after day he endured its silence. 
And then comes the crisis. See those two, face 
to face; the man gaunt and wearied; the Power 
of Evil eager, importunate, fascinating. The 
Man oppressed in his weakness with the painful 
sense of the weary years of mission that stretched 
49 




50 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


out before him; Satan presenting rapidly shifting 
alternatives by which the end of the mission may 
be attained and the pain of it avoided. And over 
all, the watching angels! 

Consider, first — 

That Satan assumes that we want to gratify 
self and avoid pain, and that therefore if he can 
show how this may be done we will seize the op¬ 
portunity, even though in doing so we sacrifice 
the future to the immediate. Is that true of us 
— that we will gratify ourselves on any terms? 
That we will sacrifice our privileges to our com¬ 
fort ? 

Consider, second — 

That what Satan promises he will perform. 
“Ye shall be as gods knowing good and evil.” 
And so it was. “ The eyes of them both were 
opened.” “ All these things will I give thee ”; 
and so he would. If you serve Satan you will 
get your pay in kingdoms. But of course you 
must pay your part; it will be at the expense of 
servitude, with Satan as over-lord. Are you will¬ 
ing to pay the price ? 

Let us pray, then — 

Deliver us from the evil one. 


TEMPTATION 


51 


O Christ, save us. 

Lord, have mercy upon us. 

Christ, have mercy upon us. 

Lord, have mercy upon us. 

Temptation is the means of the more effective 
discipline of the human soul. And yet we are 
wont to resent it; we writhe and groan under the 
repeated assaults of the hosts of evil. Within and 
without they press about us and upon us. They 
storm our souls as the enemy storms the belea¬ 
guered fortress. They form alliances with trai¬ 
tors within to open the gates of the soul and leave 
us defenceless. Fascinating visions of immediate 
enjoyment are spread glittering before us, and all 
the world seems within our grasp. Turbulent 
senses seethe until it seems that like an irresistible 
flood they will sweep away all the barriers principle 
opposes; and we cry in our perplexity, our dis¬ 
tress, our agony — Can this be right ? Can God 
be just and allow all this ? God has given me this 
nature, these appetites — Did he give them to be 
just a torture? 

But there is no other way in which God can 
test the loyalty of those whom he has endowed 
with the awful gift of free will. If we are free 
we must freely choose God; and that implies the 


52 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


equal opportunity of rejecting and abandoning 
God. Temptation is the fire that tries; and, as 
S. Augustine points out, fire has the double ef¬ 
fect of softening or hardening according to the 
nature of the material to which it is applied. 
The clay is hardened by the fire; the wax is 
softened. The trial of painful death sent one 
thief to destruction, the other to Paradise. Out 
of those who were near our Lord, some were at¬ 
tracted by the beauty of his holiness; but Judas 
went to his own place. 

Life is a sifting process, and the sieve through 
which God passes us to separate the good wheat 
from the chaff, is temptation. Or, to change the 
figure, temptation is the method of the training 
of the spiritual athlete under which he may break 
down or as the result of which his powers may 
develop. We need such testing at every point in 
our spiritual career: there is no other way of de¬ 
termining character. No one can be sure of an 
untried strength. Not only are not other people 
sure of our powers till we have demonstrated their 
existence, but we are not even ourselves sure of 
them. Indeed, we might go farther and say that 
the power does not really exist till it has been 
called out by the test. 

There is so much apparent strength that is only 
apparent; we believe in it, our friends believe 


TEMPTATION 


53 


in it, but God does not believe in it. He assumes 
nothing till he has tested it. How familiar it is, 
this break-down of apparent strength, especially 
in the case of the young. The child that we have 
been so careful with and who seemed so full of 
promise and on whom we felt that we could cer¬ 
tainly rely and who breaks down, as it were, over 
night. Every priest is familiar with the people 
who were most faithful in the parish and who 
seemed to be acting on strong Christian convic¬ 
tions; or the like people who come to him with 
glowing letters of recommendation; in either case, 
and for some seemingly insufficient reason, the 
religious life collapses. It turns out that what 
had appeared to be religious principle was 
merely routine and custom which was unable 
to stand some ordinary temptation or some 
change of environment. Other cases one has 
known which had endured well for a time, 
but went to pieces when a strong temptation as¬ 
sailed. There are cases in which faith goes down 
before the touch of personal affliction. We are 
sometimes able to comfort others in their affliction 
but when the touch is upon our own lives our re¬ 
ligion proves to be an empty shell. We know 
nothing of an untried strength. 

So temptation and failure under it reveal us to 
ourselves. We find the flaws in our own charac- 


54 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


ter, we see the weak places and learn the lines 
upon which we must work. The office of tempta¬ 
tion in the moral sphere is like that of pain in the 
physical sphere: pain is unpleasant, hut it reveals 
the existence of disease. Imagine what a pain¬ 
less disease would be; imagine the horror of know¬ 
ing that one might be deeply diseased and yet no 
symptom of it appear. But without temptation 
we could not at all know whether we were acting 
on religious principle or no. 

And then too, temptation is the mode by which 
we pass from innocence to virtue. The things are 
quite different. In the story in the book of Gen¬ 
esis Adam and Eve are innocent, but they are not 
virtuous. When their innocence is exposed to the 
trial of temptation they fall. The child is inno¬ 
cent, but in like manner it does not become virtu¬ 
ous till it become old enough to know the differ¬ 
ence between good and evil and to choose for itself 
which it will have. What changes innocence to 
virtue is the determination of the will. Innocence 
is a negative state, virtue is a positive state. 
Temptation gives the opportunity of choice and 
enables us to pass from the one to the other — 
from the state in which we were merely without 
experience of evil to the state in which evil has 
been met and overcome. The struggle with pas¬ 
sion and appetite and desire in temptation fixes 


Temptation 


55 


the will and sets the character. I do not know 
that I will not steal until I have had the oppor¬ 
tunity. I do not know that my chastity is a 
definite spiritual choice until I have been through 
the fires of awakened lust. I do not know that 
my liberality is anything more than respect for 
my social position till I have seized the opportunity 
to give in secret. 

And it is all very severe, very searching as the 
testing and development of the powers of a spir¬ 
itual being must needs he. And our falls are fre¬ 
quent and grievous. And therein, in our attitude 
toward our falls, develops a certain danger. It 
is humiliating to fall, and we, instead of facing 
the fact openly, are wont to seek explanation and 
excuse and justification. We tend to regard our¬ 
selves as exceptional and our temptations as pe¬ 
culiar. Under ordinary circumstances — other 
peopled circumstances, no doubt — there would 
have been no excuse for our act. But the circum¬ 
stances are not ordinary; we have a weak will 
and the conditions of the temptation made it ex¬ 
ceptionally strong. Our passions, too, are of un¬ 
usual force; we do not imagine that other people 
feel that particular temptation in quite the same 
way that we do. Then we are exceptionally sit¬ 
uated and what would he clearly unjustifiable un¬ 
der other circumstances is quite another matter in 


56 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


ours. There is a certain hereditary element in 
us that explains the appeal of the temptation to 
us and makes our yielding to it a less sinful 
thing. 

Well, let us assume that this is not mere pre¬ 
tence, but contains a large element of truth; let 
us assume that our circumstances are peculiar and 
that our passions are strong and all the rest of 
it. What then? It simply comes to this in the 
end — does it not — that all human beings are not 
alike? That my weakness is not your weakness, 
and that the appetite that is weak in me is strong 
in you. I have my own battles to fight that are 
determined by my circumstances and you have 
yours; that is not a very extraordinary discovery. 
I have a weak will; well, that is no excuse for sin; 
it merely marks out the battle-ground on which 
I must fight. I have a hasty temper; well, what 
am I going to do about it ? Set about overcoming 
my weakness or plead incapacity and surrender ? 

Sometimes we are overwhelmed with a sense of 
incapacity. Temptation so besets us; every sense 
seems an open door through which the tempter 
finds a ready access to the soul. We are girt about 
with the forces of evil; we find that in truth the 
devil as a roaring lion goeth about seeking whom 
he may devour. We burn with a sense of sin. 
But then, remember, that temptation is not sin. 


TEMPTATION 


57 


You say, If I were in a proper state, spiritually, 
I should not be so beset. These thoughts of evil, 
these impulses to anger and to uncharity; these 
motions of the sensual nature; these times of re¬ 
bellion against the restraints of religion would 
not come. How can my holiest hours he invaded 
by visions of sin? How can thick swarming 
thoughts of evil thrust themselves into my very 
prayers ? How, when I honestly wish to give my¬ 
self to devotion, can my mind be seized upon and 
carried off to the world? Does not that mean 
that there is a fundamental sinfulness that delivers 
me over to the Power of Darkness ? 

Ho: not at all. Hone of these things are by any 
necessity the result of your willing; they may be, 
but they need not be. Examine, not your 
thoughts, but your will. That only is sin that 
we will in conscious opposition to the will of God. 
The will is the controlling power in us; examine 
that. Do you will to sin; conscious of the oppo¬ 
sition of your thought or act to the mind of God, 
do you still will it? 

Eor remember, back of all the varied forms of 
temptation there is a person. There is a good deal 
in modern thought which makes it difficult for us 
to grasp this in any clear-cut way. Men try to 
make us shade down the notion of evil into a 
merely impersonal influence, or even a form of im- 


58 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


perfection. But so surely as back of all righteous¬ 
ness there is the Person of God, so back of all un¬ 
righteousness there is the person of Satan. 

We are dealing then with a person and tempta¬ 
tion is his work, and therefore independent of us; 
as the work of a power outside ourselves it be¬ 
comes formidable only as we give it access to the 
citadel of our life by willing what Satan wills. 
So long as we keep our wills true to the will of 
God we may suffer all the assaults of temptation, 
but we contract no stain. 

But, we think again, we have been suffering 
these assaults all our lives; we have fought with 
some seeming success, but the battle is as sore as 
ever. Does not that indicate plainly enough fail¬ 
ure, is not that ground enough for discouragement 2 
Again, no: possibly quite the opposite. Indeed, 
this constant sense of combat, of having to strive 
desperately to maintain any ground that we may 
have attained, may well encourage us. It is quite 
a mistake to assume that we ought to be in a state 
of peace. Bemember again we are dealing with 
a person who aims to control us. If we were deal¬ 
ing with an internal tendency we might, to be sure, 
expect that as we made progress the tendency 
would weaken. But it is different with a person; 
our resistance does not weaken him or lead him 
to give over his assaults. Quite the contrary; 


TEMPTATION 


59 


the harder we resist, the more strenuous are like 
to be his endeavors to break down our resistance. 
As the state of our spiritual life varies the form 
of temptation may change, but the fact will re¬ 
main. Satan finds means to attack even the 
greatest saints; his hope that ultimately he will 
find some form of temptation to which they will 
succumb is indestructible. We see him returning 
three times to the assault on our blessed Lord him¬ 
self. 

But this I think we should look to, that tempta¬ 
tion should become more purely external to us; 
that is, that there should be found less and less 
in us to which temptation can appeal; less and 
less for Satan to lay hold of. His real strength 
and our real danger is always in the possibility of 
our cooperation with him. 

And then the pain that we feel at temptation, 
the trouble of soul it causes us, is a hopeful sign. 
Those who are under the dominion of Satan lie 
passive in his grasps they experience no struggle: 
the sight of sin is no trouble to them. So long 
as we experience the trouble of temptation, we 
are free: the slave of sin is passive in his servitude. 
And perhaps Satan desists from presenting new 
temptations lest we awake the dull and slumbering 
conscience. 

The struggle never ends because the struggle is 


60 


THE CHRISTIAN'S DAY 


so necessary to ns; and not merely necessary to 
keep our powers exercised, but necessary to keep 
us bumble. We so tend to pride; we never win 
any little victory but we are delighted with our¬ 
selves. If it were not for the constant presence 
of temptation, the constant humiliation of falls, 
we should grow insufferably conceited. Even S. 
Paul needed a thorn in the flesh to balance the 
greatness of the spiritual gifts that were his. The 
army that does mere garrison duty and does not 
all the time expect assault grows languid. It is 
battle all the time, then; the thing is to know how 
to marshal our forces so that it may be a hopeful 
battle. 

The ordinary point of view seems to be that in 
dealing with temptation we must be on the alert to 
offer direct resistance to each temptation as it 
arises. That, no doubt, is necessary, but it seems 
to me unlikely to yield the best results. It is al¬ 
ways a make-shift, and leaves us with the same 
battle to fight the next time the temptation pre¬ 
sents itself. We may fight off the same tempta¬ 
tion every day and never be much the stronger 
for it. The only effective method of dealing with 
temptation is by the strengthening of the spiritual 
life; we can grow into such a state that temptation 
will not appeal to us. As our lives become more 
conformed to the life of our Lord there will be 


TEMPTATION 


61 


less in them for temptation to lay hold on. In 
dealing with an habitual temptation we shall suc¬ 
ceed better if we concentrate our attention on the 
development of the opposite virtue than if we 
merely try to expel the tendency to sin and leave 
the soul empty. 

Some temptations spring out of circumstances, 
out of the associations of our lives. Such can be 
readily anticipated; and we are bound to avoid 
the circumstances that will expose us to them. 
We are bound to avoid an association which ex¬ 
poses us to continual temptation even in the case 
where we have so far resisted and not fallen into 
sin. We have no right to put ourselves into grave 
danger of sinning for the pleasure that we derive 
from anyone’s society. For most of us there are 
certain persons or groups of persons that constitute 
a constant danger. It may be a danger to our 
faith because of the opinions that are openly ex¬ 
pressed and that we do not know how to deal with. 
It may be a danger to our morals through the gos¬ 
sip, the impure talk, the general laxity of the con¬ 
versation that goes on. We know perfectly that 
it is not good for us to be exposed to such things. 
We say to ourselves, “ We do not join in them ”; 
but if we did not enjoy them we should not find 
pleasure there. The mere capacity for holding 
our tongue does not count for very much. And 


G2 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


if we do fall, which we probably do much more 
than we admit, it is an aggravation of the sin that 
we have willingly exposed ourselves to the danger 
of committing it. 

Other temptations must be fought by the process 
of undermining them. Develop, as I said a mo¬ 
ment ago, the opposite virtue. If you find in you 
a tendency to covetousness, give. If you are 
prone to waste your time or use it selfishly, work 
for others. If you are inclined to light or silly 
or gossipy talk, learn to keep silence even at the 
expense of being thought dull or stupid. Char¬ 
acter is positive; and the development of positive 
qualities is the best method of self-protection. Ir¬ 
reverence is best overcome by cultivating rever¬ 
ence; bad temper by kindliness. Be positive. 

There are two wonderful endowments of our na¬ 
ture which uncontrolled are constantly in league 
with Satan. They are the imagination and the 
memory. It would perhaps be difficult to overesti¬ 
mate the part that they play in temptation. Take 
the common sin of temper. We are quick and 
sensitive, and we think that we have been slighted 
— we are always thinking that. Perhaps the 
slight was purely imaginary to start with. Then 
we proceed to imagine all sorts of things. We 
imagine what we ought to say and do under the 
circumstances. We go on to dramatise the situa- 


TEMPTATION 


63 


tion. Such and such a thing was said, and we 
retorted effectively. Then there was another an¬ 
swer and we rejoined — always with brilliancy. 
How the sense of injury grows by this process. 
Before we know it wo are in a state of emotional 
tumult that would hardly have been justified had 
an attack been made on our life. Again, one of 
the worst sins of imagination is the attribution 
of motives to others. We rarely know why peo¬ 
ple act or say what they do, but we think that we 
are clever enough to infer it. There are people 
who quite pride themselves on this sort of clever¬ 
ness. They are usually mistaken; but how much 
of the friction of life grows out of their assumed 
cleverness. 

Or take the memory — how it holds on to a 
sense of injury, renewing it day by day. It is apt 
to crystallise itself into the hypocritical platitude 
— I can forgive, but I cannot forget. Particu¬ 
larly dangerous is the memory of people with a 
sinful past. The circumstances, the very sensa¬ 
tions, of a past sin are being perpetually repro¬ 
duced. We awake from some half-dream to re¬ 
alise that we have been living over in memory and 
imagination a past sin. A state of doubt, of re¬ 
bellion against God, of uncharity, of impurity, 
has been accurately reproduced in all its details: 
there needs but one thing to reproduce the guilt 


64 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


of the past — consent. A new guilt is contracted, 
not by the repetition of the act, but by the repetition 
of the consent. In dealing with temptation there 
are few enemies so subtle as the undisciplined 
memory and imagination. 

To turn to another phase of our subject. We 
seem to ourselves to have striven long and faith¬ 
fully, and with quite inadequate result. Have we 
striven rightly? That depends. Have you been 
striving in your own strength or in God’s ? There 
is an almost ineradicable tendency to assume that 
we must first acquire a certain amount of virtue 
and then come and present ourselves to God as those 
who have shown themselves worthy that he should 
help them. If we could only get it rooted in 
our minds once for all that the sacraments are 
not rewards of virtue; that they are not intended 
to be the crowns of Christian conduct, but aids 
to support feet just beginning to walk! If we 
can “ get good ” without the sacraments there 
would seem to be little meaning or use in them. 
The proper refuge of the tempted soul is not the 
weakness of its own will, but the strength of God. 
The only thing that should keep us from the sac¬ 
raments is a rebellious will. Failure, which keeps 
so many away, should only drive us there more 
frequently. Where should the soul, hard beset 
by sin, overwhelmed by its weakness, oppressed by 


TEMPTATION 


the sense of its own unworthiness seek relief, if 
not at the feet of Jesus in its confession and in the 
arms of Jesus at the Altar ? “ Come unto me,” 

not ye that are strong and victorious, but “ all ye 
that are weary and heavy-laden,” is the encourag¬ 
ing invitation of the Lord. 

Our hope is in Jesus: and we come to him hopo- 
fully because he himself went through our experi¬ 
ence. He was tempted in all points like as we 
are. He is therefore our example — the example 
of hopeful struggle. 

But, you say, how does that example really 
help ? After all, between him and us there is a 
great gulf fixed. He is God; it was impossible 
that he should sin. Could he really be tempted ? 

He was God; but incarnate God. His tempta¬ 
tion was a real thing, not a dramatic action. He 
felt the power of temptation and overcame it by 
the same means that are open to us. For, con¬ 
sider: The personal suffering of temptation does 
not come from yielding or the power to yield. It 
comes from the cry of the awakened appetite or 
desire. The fact that you resist increases the 
pain. The temptation that you do not yield to 
causes you more pain than the one that you give 
way before. Indeed, the keenness with which we 
feel temptation is the measure of our resistance. 
I have an appetite for drink, let us say, or a pas- 


66 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


sion for gambling: if I yield there is no pain; 
there is gratification. The pain is in the resist¬ 
ance. In keeping appetite unsatisfied I suffer 
through the constant presence of the presented op¬ 
portunity. Let a young man be placed in a posi¬ 
tion of trust, and then, through circumstances, 
come to have pressing need of money — it is the 
day by day resistance that wears on him. Our 
Lord in the desert suffered the more in that he 
could not eat without forfeiting his mission. 

And then our Lord did not resist sin by the 
power of his Godhead that could not sin; but with 
the power of his humanity, by the exertion of his 
human will strengthened by the action of the 
Holy Spirit. As the presence of the divine 
did not counteract the weakness of the flesh, but 
he issued from his trial weak and fainting; so his 
human will went through the lonely struggle with 
the tempter, making use of the grace of God. 

And that grace is ours. We enter all our strug¬ 
gles hopefully because we feel that the omnipo¬ 
tence of God is behind us. Nothing can harm us 
while we hold his hand. No power of the world 
or of the flesh or of Satan has any strength against 
the soul that is loyal to the guidance of the Holy 
Spirit. We rest secure in the Everlasting Arms. 
We walk in the painful footsteps of Jesus; but we 
walk not alone; Jesus is walking with us. 


TEMPTATION 


67 


<c When thou passest through the waters, I will 
be with thee: and through the rivers, they shall 
not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the 
fire, thou shalt not he burned; neither shall the 
flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy 
God. The Holy One of Israel thy Saviour.” 




THE FOURTH MEDITATION 



THE FOURTH MEDITATION 

REPENTANCE 


Let us listen to the words of the Gospel — 

ND the Lord turned and looked upon 
Peter . . . and Peter went out and 

wept bitterly.” 



Let us picture — 

The scene of S. Peter’s denial. The house is 
filled with a curious crowd gathered to witness 
what seems the end of this fanatical movement of 
the Galileans. “ The authorities have finally 
acted,” we can imagine men saying with satisfac¬ 
tion. They push for place and strain their eyes 
to see this pretended prophet. They notice from 
time to time that one of the Galileans has got in, 
but they are too busy to pay much attention, and 
71 





72 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


they accept his denials easily. The central figure 
in this scene we should think sufficiently occupied, 
in this crisis of his career, with his own troubles. 
But no, he has time to think of an erring soul. 
He turns and looks upon Peter, and the look 
smites like fire. And Peter went out and wept 
bitterly. 

Consider, first — 

Thou also wast with Jesus of Hazareth. He 
has kept you all your life, has he not ? His is the 
guiding hand that has led you; his is the voice that 
restrained. But the world came and offered itself 
and you took it. People found you in strange 
places, and said, surprised, “ Thou also art one 
of this Man’s disciples ”; and you denied, and 
said, “ I know not what thou sayest.” Men saw 
you in unexpected company, and they said, 
“ Surely, thou art a Galilean ”; and you denied, 
not in words, but in conduct; you denied — “ I 
know not the man.” 

Consider, second — 

Jesus has never denied you. He has looked 
on you again and again. He has looked on you 
when you were fascinated with the joys of life; 
looked when you wept amid life’s failures and 
disasters. He has been watching all these jyears, 


REPENTANCE 


73 


it may be, for the door of your heart to swing 
open to him. Are you going to open it to-day? 
You think that you have given yourself to him, 
but you have been keeping back something. Are 
you going to give it to him to-day ? He has been 
watching for the tears of a sincere repentance. 
Are you going to shed them to-day? Jesus is 
looking upon you perchance for the last time. 
The next time it may be from a throne set in judg¬ 
ment. And those who surround that throne shall 
look on him whom they pierced. 

Let us pray, then — 

O Lord, give me sincere repentance. O Lord, 
give me a broken and a contrite heart. 

Almighty and everlasting God, convert our 
minds, we beseech thee, to deeds that shall be 
well pleasing in thy sight; that thy rebuke may 
not prove, by our neglect, a greater cause of pun¬ 
ishment, but, by our amendment, a Fatherly ad¬ 
monition; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

We have perhaps gone on our way through life 
with little deep thought of its meaning. We have 
taken it for granted that we were fairly religious 
people, at least as good as the average. Hot 
saints by any means, we would not claim that; but 


74 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


T we have kept pretty well up with our religious du¬ 
ties, we have been estimable members of the 
Church; and there has been a silent assumption 
that there was nothing to worry about. 

And then we passed through some crisis, any lit¬ 
tle thing that God has used for his purposes. It 
may have been a serious illness, or an accident 
that befell us, a book that we read or a sermon 
that we listened to — whatever it was we came^ut 
of the experience with a consciousness that was 
new to us, the consciousness that we were sinners. 
We have always known that we were sinners, to be 
sure; we have been saying Sunday after Sunday 
that we were miserable sinners. But we never 
attached much meaning to the words. They were 
there in the Prayer Book and it was quite proper 
to use them; they were a religious way of speak¬ 
ing, but they never seemed to commit us to much. 
But now we come out of our crisis with our easy¬ 
going self-esteem shattered. A sinner! That 
means something new; that means a soul out of 
harmony with God. And God — God is not a 
formula, God is a living being who holds the 
strings of my life. God the All-pure, the All- 
just, I have offended him; him, my Creator, my 
Redeemer, my Sanctifier. My life is not right in 
the sight of God. My life which I rather flat¬ 
tered myself upon suddenly appears in a new 


REPENTANCE 


75 


light — stained and scarred and defiled. I stand 
unveiled to myself in the presence of God my 
judge. 

That may he the beginning of repentance. Re¬ 
pentance is a change of mind, however operated ; 
a change of mind horn of the perception of the 
sinfulness of sin. God hates sin. Ah, yes, we 
know that. But God hates my sin, hates sin in 
me — that is a different matter. 

As life goes on there should grow upon us a 
deepening sense of God’s attitude toward sin. 
That sense will never grow upon us so long as we 
seek to found it in our understanding of human 
life. We shudder, no doubt, at the sins of men. 
We lay down our paper some morning with the 
feeling that we have had a new revelation of 
what humanity is capable of in the way of in¬ 
iquity. But shudder as we will such contempla¬ 
tion of exceptional wickedness will never give us 
the right point of view. If we want to know what 
sin is we must try to look at it through God’s 
eyes. 

God’s attitude toward sin is expressed in the 
Cross of Jesus Christ. There, in that wan, ex¬ 
hausted, agonising figure, hanging nailed in the 
open face of heaven is God’s thought about sin. 
And not about the sin of the world, or sin in gen- 


76 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


eral, but about your sin. It is a personal matter 
to each one of us — that dying of the Son of God. 
Nothing less than that were of any avail to open 
the kingdom of heaven to any soul. The least sin 
you ever committed required that. 

But if the Cross reveals God’s hatred of sin 
it has also another side: it equally reveals his love 
for the sinner. The Cross is what God was will¬ 
ing to do in order that you might be saved. 

Repentance is bom out of the contemplation of 
the Cross. Let your eyes wander from that and 
you at once begin to measure yourself by other 
standards. You begin to think of the opinion of 
others about sin. Sin is not nice, at least some 
sins are not nice. But other people seem to be 
undisturbed by them — good reputable people. 
Priests live out of the world and get a cloistered 
estimate of sin; the habit of preaching leads them 
to over-emphasis. Of course, bad sin — the sins 
of the lower classes. But just ordinary transgres¬ 
sions such as one can hardly avoid! Just sins of 
the tongue, or neglects of duty, which everyone 
except very religious people fall in to, they can¬ 
not be so bad. What great harm is there in 
them? 

What great harm ? They drove the nails into 
the Cross of Christ. You are estimating sin by 
an utterly false standard, the standard of its so- 


REPENTANCE 


11 


cial effect. God estimates it by the effect that it 
has on your soul in your relation to him. The 
misery of sin is not that it displeases your neigh¬ 
bors, but that it separates your soul f?om God. 
The slightest sin tends to do that. 

We get then to this question: Do we really 
care about offending God \ Is that the chief con¬ 
cern that we have in our actions quite apart from 
any other effects of them ? Do we fear to offend 
God ? Fear to offend God quite literally, not fear 
the consequences; for it is necessary to guard 
against an imperfect or false repentance. Often¬ 
times what we call repentance is little other than 
the fear of consequences. We have come to un¬ 
derstand that sin has consequences; we fear them 
or we feel them and they drive us to something 
that we call repentance; or appalled at the conse¬ 
quences of what we have done we are driven to 
remorse. That may help towards repentance, but 
in itself it is quite far from it. 

The only adequate ground for repentance is the 
conviction that through sin we have wounded the 
love of God. The most complete expression of 
God in human language is that God is love. God 
reaches out after us with the yearning love of a 
Father. By our sin we have wounded that love; 
by sin we have turned our backs on the Father 
that seeks us; by sin we have defied and scorned 


78 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


and insulted that love. To realise that, to feel 
the heart throb with shame and anguish at the 
thought of it, to feel the cheek burn and the eyes 
grow wet at the ingratitude of it — that is re¬ 
pentance. To see the Father turn to us, not with 
threats and punishment, but with wailing love — 
that is the real punishment of sin. “ How shall 
I give thee up, Ephraim ? ” “ O my people, what 

have I done unto thee, wherein have I wearied 
thee ? ” “ How often would I have gathered thee 

— and thou wouldst not?” O, the utter shame 
of having such words come to us from God! What 
sort of hearts have we that we should deserve this ? 
Shall we not at least free ourselves from any per¬ 
sonal application of this to us, if repentance will 
save us? 

What is repentance? Repentance is, in the 
first stage, sorrow for having wounded the love of 
God. Sorrow for sin is a deep thing. It is not 
the facile acknowledgment that we have done 
wrong, not a languid regret that we are not better 
than we are, not a nerveless survey of the past 
that evaporates in a sigh. It is the broken and 
contrite heart that God does not despise. The note 
of contrition is reality, a deep conviction of hav¬ 
ing committed a personal offence. You know how 
you felt as a child when you had offended your 


REPENTANCE 


79 


mother. When, although there were no re¬ 
proaches, no punishment, you felt the silent pres¬ 
ence of something that shut you from her heart. 
You know there was no joy for you, no rest, till 
that something was gone; and you know now that 
all the time the mother’s heart was throbbing be¬ 
hind the bar and it was the throbbing love that 
was drawing you. Well, what you felt then was 
contrition; and to-day the heart of God is throb¬ 
bing behind the barrier of sin calling us back to 
him. There is no force with God. “ I will draw 
them with the cords of a man, with the bands of 
love.” 

If we are to feel an adequate contrition we 
must have adequate self-knowledge. The next step 
for us to consider, then, is the method of obtain¬ 
ing it — self-examination. We cannot repent of 
being sinners; there is no reality in that. If we 
are indeed sinners it is because we have offended 
God in certain definite ways. We do not repent 
of sin, but of sins. Our sinful state before God 
is the result of certain definite acts. We are sin¬ 
ners because we have spoken falsely, or been 
proud or unkind or whatever it may be. It is 
hard work, self-knowledge, and easy to shirk. It 
is much easier to say, I am a sinner, and let it go 
at that, than it is to say, I am a liar or an unchar¬ 
itable person. No one really knows himself, and 


80 


THE CHRISTIAN'S DAY 


we are always learning if there be any earnest¬ 
ness in us. It is comparatively easy to know 
what we have done, but it is the motive that de¬ 
termines the nature of the act and our motives 
often escape us. We are ready to despair of ever 
getting at complete self-knowledge. And even in 
the realm of act we are constantly beset by the 
temptation to do superficial work, and no super¬ 
ficial work will do. A sin unrepented is a sin un¬ 
forgiven if the lack of repentance be due to our 
superficial work. We forget some things un¬ 
avoidably, but others wilfully. There are dark 
corners in our souls that we do not willingly look 
into; there are closed doors behind which we have 
shut the past which we would fain not open. But 
to the eye of God darkness and light are both 
alike; we cannot shut him out. Search deep then 
into all the hidden things. 

And the confession of these sins to God which 
is the end of this self-examination must be equally 
particular. We are not forgiven for being sin¬ 
ners, but for having committed certain specific of¬ 
fences. A detailed confession is indispensable. 
And if we are accustomed to make detailed confes¬ 
sions before our communions, preceded by unusu¬ 
ally careful self-examination, it helps greatly to 
have the habit of daily self-examination. Indeed 
a careful life will find this practice indispensable. 


REPENTANCE 


81 


We can hardly consider that we have brought 
our repentance to a satisfactory conclusion until 
we have done what in us lies to undo the past. 
We can, to be sure, never quite do that; but we 
can show our will to do it and in some cases make 
the will effectual. If we have wronged our neigh¬ 
bors we cannot think our repentance very heart¬ 
felt unless we are ready to repair any wrong that 
we have done. Such readiness is indeed a pretty 
good test of our sincerity. Yet it sometimes in¬ 
volves a pretty hard struggle with self after we 
had imagined self quite conquered. I suppose 
that to retract one’s words or one’s actions to those 
we have injured is quite one of the hardest things 
in life. To confess one’s ill-doing to God comes 
much easier. But certainly we cannot have real 
repentance if we are willing to let a wrong of our 
doing stand rather than undergo a little humilia¬ 
tion— or a great humiliation, if you like. We 
cannot be at all sure of our own reality other¬ 
wise. 

And then there is a certain restitution due to 
God. Sin, our sin, has robbed God of his glory. 
He was entitled to be glorified by us before the 
world. Of course no act of ours can increase the 
essential glory of God; but there is another glory 
of God which comes to him through his life as it is 
reflected in the life of his creatures. The crea- 


82 


THE CHRISTIAN'S DAY 


tnre manifests the glory of God. Our obedience 
and service causes his Name to be praised. We 
are his servants, and that increase of glory that he 
is entitled to expect from us as the return for his 
gifts is lacking if we fail in our service through 
sin. Have you ever thought very much of sin 
from that point of view, as robbing God of his 
due ? You squander your energies and the usury 
that God expected from you is lost. You waste 
your time, and the progress of God’s kingdom 
halts. Your conduct is unbecoming a Christian, 
and the respect due to God is diminished in the 
world. 

Are you not bound to make that good ? So far 
as is possible, undoubtedly. You have failed in 
your prayers and a more zealous devotion ought 
to mark your life when you realise that. You 
have sinned through unkindness; shall not the per¬ 
ception of this mean that you will seek out occa¬ 
sions for being kind ? You have possibly injured 
souls by the neglect of prayer and intercession; 
shall you not show redoubled energy in these prac¬ 
tices in the future ? Your example has led some¬ 
one into temptation; surely you owe it to God to 
try to rescue him or others in the like circum¬ 
stances. Your words have made religion to be 
lightly regarded and have discredited God; you 
must be the more earnest and careful in the fu- 


REPENTANCE 


83 


ture. Restoration is not a matter of stolen money 
merely — that we have not here to do with. There 
is a more urgent restoration in that it is often the 
work of years to atone for the sins and neglects of 
one’s youth through which God has been griev¬ 
ously dishonored. 

It is no child’s play, repentance; and we some¬ 
times weary and grow discouraged. We feel, for 
example, that our contrition is so imperfect. One 
often goes away from one’s confession feeling how 
utterly inadequate one’s sorrow is. Is a repent¬ 
ance real that we feel no deeper than that ? And 
for our encouragement we need to recall that not 
feeling but sincerity is the test of repentance. We 
cannot command a deep emotion whenever we want 
it. Emotion is partly a matter of temperament 
and partly of physical condition; these are out of 
our control. But we can always command a sin¬ 
cere heart and will. I know that I never feel, as 
it seems natural that I should feel, the baseness and 
ingratitude of sin. But I can command my will, 
my understanding: I can confess my baseness and 
acknowledge before God what I know that I am. 
And that calm, deliberate self-judgment is surely 
of greater moment than some momentary wave of 
feeling which passes over me. Emotion is some¬ 
times desirable to arouse one to one’s state; but 


84 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


we must beware of identifying a fleeting emo¬ 
tional state with that true contrition which is the 
turning of the will from sin. 

Indeed, too much attention is paid to the feel¬ 
ings; dependence on them is almost sure to lead 
to morbidness. Morbid persons are perpetually 
concerned about the completeness and sincerity of 
their confessions. And for the same reason, be¬ 
cause applying some false test of the emotions. 
Again, that is not the test. If you are tempted 
that way, why, just disregard the emotions alto¬ 
gether. Look to the completeness of your inten¬ 
tion : what have you honestly sought to do ? Are 
you honestly bent on the improvement of your 
life? Morbid people will lament over their fail¬ 
ures in feeling when they are very likely quite care¬ 
less about their failures in obedience. Our Lord’s 
test of love it has to be constantly insisted is not 
feeling but action. If you love me, keep my com¬ 
mandments. 

And again: increasing earnestness in repentance 
and increasing self-knowledge is apt to bring to 
light the fact that we are worse than we had sup¬ 
posed. That is quite certainly the case; but so 
far from being discouraged we ought to be glad at 
length to have found out the truth about ourselves. 
We thought that we were quite good people and by 
consequence were living in a fool’s paradise. But 


REPENTANCE 


85 


it also brings quite commonly the conviction that 
we are growing worse, which almost certainly is 
not the case. What is happening is that we are 
getting to know ourselves better. Our attention 
had been at first fixed on the coarser growths of 
sin; as we cut them away sins are revealed which 
seem to be new. In reality they had been there 
all along only we had never before paid any at¬ 
tention to them. What is happening is that we 
are gaining deeper knowledge of self. That ought 
not to discourage us; it ought to convince us that 
we are at last facing the reality about ourselves 
and have therefore reached a place from which we 
may hope to move on to permanent improvement. 
Our conscience finally, under the action of grace, 
is becoming sensitive. 

And it is encouraging at this point to remem¬ 
ber that the greatest saints have been the greatest 
penitents. Just because they know God best they 
know sin best. The sinner is not troubled about 
his state; he goes on sinning with a light heart. 
It is the saint that feels the slightest stain on his 
soul as an unendurable thing. 

And what is the outcome of the life of peni¬ 
tence— for it is a life and not a passing act? 
We may look for the removal of all that separates 
us from God. We are tearing down the walls that 


86 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


sin has erected between our souls and him. Sin 
has built up strong bulwarks behind which it has 
entrenched itself; it has secured itself in modes 
of thought and habits of action. Our lives have 
got accustomed to its defiances of God. Repent¬ 
ance is the deliberate assault upon all this: a de¬ 
termined effort to clear the soul. We have at 
length come to have a right valuation of things. 
We appreciate that our relation to God, the peace 
between our souls and him, is the greatest thing in 
life. We seek to remove all that can interfere. 
And this means increase of grace; a grace that re¬ 
wards our striving and is God’s approving answer 
to our efforts. God never leaves the soul to strug¬ 
gle alone; he sustains its every effort to reach him. 
From the depths of our sorrow for sin it may 
seem that God is very far from us, that clouds and 
darkness are round about him, that there is a hid¬ 
ing of his power. But it is not so; God is very 
near the soul striving out of its darkness to come 
to him. Indeed, that it strives at all is, that all 
unknown to it, he himself has come out into the 
tangled wilderness whither it has strayed to seek 
it. Its painful efforts to recover itself are in 
reality the drawing of God. 

For the love of God for penitents is a very spe¬ 
cial love. It runs through so many of our Lord’s 
parables, it shines through so many of his acts. 


REPENTANCE 


87 


We think of the Prodigal Son whom the father 
goes out to meet; we think of the Magdalen to 
whom our Lord appeared first on the resurrection 
morning; we think of the look searching the soul 
of S. Peter and bringing the bitter tears; we think 
of the joy in the presence of the angels of God 
over the returning sinner; we think, above all, that 
it was of the very essence of our Lord’s mission 
to seek and to save the lost. Yes, the love of our 
Lord for penitents is a very wonderful love. With 
never ending patience he is ever trying to draw 
us nearer to himself. 

And that is the end — to be drawn to him. 
The end of penitence is peace. Out of the strug¬ 
gle we at length emerge into the peace of God. 
We rest content and quiet in his arms. 

The evening comes, the sun is sunk and gone, 

An d things lie in stillness and in rest; 

And thou, my soul, for thee one rest alone 
Remains forever, on the Father’s breast. 

The wanderer rests at last each wearied limb; 

Birds to their nests return from heath and hill; 

The sheep are gathered from the pastures dim — 

In thee, my God, my restless heart is still. 

Lord, gather from the regions dim and far 
Desires and thoughts that wandered far from thee; 


88 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


To home and rest lead on, 0 Guiding Star, 
No other home or rest but God for me. 

The daily toil of this worn body done, 

The spirit for untiring work is strong; 

Still hours of worship and of love begun, 
Of blessed vision and eternal song. 

In darkness and in silence still and sweet, 
With blessed awe my spirit feels thee near; 
Within the Holiest, worships at thy feet; 
Speak thou, and silence all my soul to hear. 

To thee my heart as incense shall arise; 
Consumed upon thine altar all my will; 
Love, praise and peace, an evening sacrifice, 
And in the Lord I rest, and I am still. 


THE FIFTH MEDITATION; 












* 


» 












THE FIFTH MEDITATION 

CONFESSION 

Let us listen to the words of the Apostle — 

||||]HE Blood of Jesus—cleanseth us from all 

Wi sin •” 

Let us try to picture — 

The crucifixion of our Lord. See him there on 
his cross between the two thieves just lifted up 
above the heads of the hostile crowd. Imagine the 
awful pain as the strain of the body comes upon 
those pierced hands and feet. It is well for 
us, who shrink from the least pain, to realise to 
the utmost the physical pain of our Lord’s cruci¬ 
fixion. And then there was a greater pain, the 
spiritual pain that came from the evidence of the 
power of sin as shown in the hostility of those 
91 




THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


who were responsible for his death. As he looks 
down into the hate-contorted faces of the crowd 
that has followed him out of the city to gloat 
over his death, the thought of the sway of sin in 
God’s world must have been bitter agony to him. 
Watch him as he hangs there and try to under¬ 
stand what that agony means. This is the end 
of the earthly life of incarnate God. Here, amid 
hostile crowds, amid open enemies, deserted by his 
disciples, with only a few faithful ones near by, 
he hangs dying. From each gaping wound the life 
blood is flowing. Hark! you can hear it falling, 
drop by drop. That blood is falling for you. 
The Blood of Jesus cleanseth all sin — cleanseth 
the whole world, if it will. Has it cleansed you ? 
Are you sure that the Blood of Jesus has washed 
your soul ? Have you received his absolving 
grace? 

Consider, first — 

This death that you have been trying to see in 
its actual circumstances, is a personal attempt of 
God to save your soul. The omniscience of God, 
means that he has a direct personal relation to 
everything he has made. It is not that God knows 
the universe as a whole, but that he has relations 
with each item of it. It is not that God knows 
mankind and saves mankind, but that he knows all 


CONFESSION 


93 


men one by one and saves them one by one. God 
has this sort of relation to you. God has had you 
in mind from all eternity. When he willed to be¬ 
come incarnate, he had you in mind; when he 
thought of his death, he thought of it as for you. 
His incarnation and death was what he was will¬ 
ing to do for you. When he thought of your soul, 
held fast in the grip of sin, this was what he was 
willing to do to free it. Do you care as much for 
your soul as God has shown that he does? He 
was willing to endure shame for it — are you ? 
He was willing to bear pain for it — are you? 
He was willing to undergo the deepest humiliation 
for it — are you ? Is it true that you revolt at 
the pain that comes to you, that you are restless 
when the practice of your religion demands sac¬ 
rifice, that you shrink from making your confes¬ 
sion because of pride, or dislike of the humiliation 
of it? What is our Lord doing on the cross? 
He is the ideal penitent, who was willing to take 
upon himself the pain and the shame of your sin, 
and is, before the faces of men, openly suffering 
for it. He is not ashamed to do this. He is not 
too proud to do this. Do you shrink from your 
confession ? 

The Blood of Jesus can clean you from all sin. 
Have you been cleansed? 


94 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


Consider, second — 

If you desire to be free from sin, that desire 
must be strong enough to overcome all the fears 
that Satan can place before your soul, otherwise 
it is not a real desire. You must be convinced 
that restored purity of soul is worth anything that 
you have to pay for it. You must have a desire 
for purity that is strong enough to overcome all 
vicious pride which fears the opinion of others, 
all shame at the thought of what the thought of 
others may be of you. Where are you to get this 
strong desire except from the crucified Jesus? 
You must be willing, nay, desire, to be crucified 
with him. As he was willing to humble himself 
to the death of the Cross, you must be willing to 
humble yourself, that you, in him, may die unto 
your sin. It is quite true — is it not — that pride 
is your root of sin ? You want to bear your head 
high in the world and think well of yourself. Can 
you really think well of yourself if you are un¬ 
reconciled to God, if you are resisting the appeal 
of the Cross, if you shrink from the shame of the 
Cross, as your crucified master did not shrink? 
Christ died that we might be forgiven. Have you 
made that forgiveness yours by any act? Sin 
is a tremendous fact — how tremendous you can 
see if you will look up at the dying Son of God. 


CONFESSION 


95 


So tremendous as that! The Dying One is at 
close grips with it. Sin is a tremendous fact in 
your life, all the more tremendous, if you do not 
feel it so. What is the extent of your personal 
struggle with it ? Have you felt it enough to he 
willing to accept the Cross with all its shame and 
sacrifice, to get rid of it? The Blood of Jesus, 
shed in the shameful death of Calvary, cleanseth 
from all sin. Has it cleansed you ? 

Let us, then, 'pray — 

O, Lord Jesus, take from me all pride, and 
grant me grace humbly to seek thy pardon as thou 
wiliest. 

O, Almighty God, who hath left power in thy 
Church to absolve all sinners who truly repent 
and believe in Thy Son Jesus Christ, grant me 
faith and repentance to seek thy pardon in the 
sacrament that thy Son instituted; that there I 
may obtain pardon and remission of all my sins, 
through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord and 
Saviour. 


I am going to speak to you of the Sacrament of 
Penance or Confession. After a pastoral experi¬ 
ence of nearly twenty-five years, I feel very 
strongly the unsatisfactory attitude of the average 



96 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


member of the Church toward this sacrament, and 
the need of very plain speaking about it. The 
present condition of the Church is most unfor¬ 
tunate in this regard. There are some members 
of the Church who deny absolutely the existence of 
the Sacrament of Penance, and there are others 
who seem to me in an even more intolerable posi¬ 
tion, who, while admitting the doctrine of the 
Sacrament, act as though it did not exist. One 
understands the denial as resting on an imperfect 
understanding of the Christian religion; one fails 
to understand the neglect. Does that rest on an 
inadequate sense of the sinfulness of sin? This 
state of things causes great distress to those who 
take their Bibles and Prayer Books literally and 
seriously. Especially it causes great distress to 
those priests, who, overwhelmed as they are by 
the sense of the greatness of their responsibility 
toward God for the souls he has committed to their 
pastoral care, are struggling to make the Gospel of 
Salvation known in its fullness and completeness 
as the one means to the attainment of that sanc¬ 
tity which is the medium of the vision of God. 

We need, too, in the Anglican Church, to get 
rid of a certain romanticism that clings about the 
practice of confession. People treat it as though 
it were a romantic act to be surrounded with an 
atmosphere of mystery. They speak of it with 


CONFESSION 


97 


bated breath as a daring spiritual adventure; or 
they conceal the fact that they make their confes¬ 
sion as though some shadow of disgrace hung 
about it. They whisper about it in corners, and 
want appointments at odd hours as though they 
were participating in some disgraceful intrigue. 
But why not treat confession naturally and openly 
as a sacrament of the Church? Naturally, one 
does not speak much about one’s sacraments, but 
one makes one’s communion in a perfectly natural 
and open way, and if it occurs to one to mention 
it one feels no hesitation or shame or need of 
concealment; why not treat confession in the same 
way? Such natural treatment of confession will 
do much to clear the intellectual atmosphere that 
surrounds it. It is just a sacrament, as Baptism 
and Confirmation, and the Holy Communion are 
sacraments. 

In speaking of this matter to members of the 
Anglican Church I feel that it will prevent mis¬ 
understanding, and will much simplify treatment, 
if I assume three things and state them as assumed. 
I assume then: 

1. That our Lord Jesus Christ committed to 
his Church, and specifically to the priesthood, as 
representing and embodying his own sole and eter¬ 
nal priesthood, the power to remit sins under such 
conditions as the Church itself should lay down. 


98 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


2. That the Church of which we are members, 
intends, and has explicitly made known its inten¬ 
tion, that its priests shall exercise this power. 

In support of this last position, I will simply 
quote two passages from the Book of Common 
Prayer. 

(a) “ Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and 
work of a priest in the Church of God, now com¬ 
mitted unto thee by the imposition of our hands; 
whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; 
and whose thou dost retain, they are retained. 
And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the word of 
God, and of his holy sacraments.” 

(b) “ Almighty God . . . hath given 

power and commandment to his Ministers, to de¬ 
clare and pronounce to his people, being peni¬ 
tent, the Absolution and Remission of their sins.” 

I understand the Church to be entirely serious 
in these statements. I understand that when, at 
the most solemn moment of my life, the bishop 
laid his hands upon me and pronounced the words 
just quoted from the ordinal, the Church meant 
precisely what it put into the mouth of the bishop 
to say. It intended me to understand those 
words in their natural sense and not to put some 
far-fetched interpretation upon them. Rather, 
it intended that I should interpret them in the 


CONFESSION 


99 


light of their history and to understand by the 
forgiveness of sins what Catholic Christendom has 
always understood. I understand that when the 
Church directs me, in the recitation of the Daily 
Offices to say to the people committed by her to 
my spiritual care, that Almighty God has given 
power and commandment to me, his minister, to 
declare and pronounce to them, his people, the 
absolution and remission of their sins, under cer¬ 
tain conditions, the Church means to be under¬ 
stood in the ordinary sense of English words. 
It is conceivable that the Church may be wrong; 
it is inconceivable, that under such circumstances 
and solemn conditions, she does not mean what 
she says. If the Church means to say that her 
priests have not power or commission to forgive 
sins, she has certainly chosen very strange words 
in which to convey the fact. She has chosen 
words that for centuries in the formulas of the 
Church have meant one thing to convey the op¬ 
posite thing. That, of course, is inconceivable 
— the mind of the Church is plain. 

It may, of course, be said, that, granted the 
existence of the power of absolution, it does not 
of necessity follow that its exercise is to be found 
in the Sacrament of Penance. It does not in¬ 
deed follow that the exclusive exercise is to be 
found there; but to deny that its usual exercise 


100 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


is to be found there is to deny the whole history 
and practice of historic Christianity. As I am 
not speaking to those who are likely to make such 
denial, I will leave this side of the question. 

It is, then, the privilege of all baptized per¬ 
sons to make confession of their sins to God in 
the presence of a priest, and, if penitent, to re¬ 
ceive from God, through his representative, the 
remission of their sins. This would seem to be 
a privilege that everyone should be eager to avail 
himself of. And yet we know that it is not. 
It remains always one of the incomprehensible 
things about the membership of the Church, the 
thing which perhaps more than any other makes 
it difficult to believe, that those things which if 
they really mean what they profess to mean, are 
not so much obligations as privileges of unspeak¬ 
able wonder, are precisely the things that a large 
proportion of the membership of the Church use 
in a very perfunctory and occasional manner. 
When one considers what we say that we mean 
by the Holy Communion one would expect the 
Altars of the Church to be thronged with those 
seeking to be fed and strengthened by the Body 
and Blood of Christ. When we consider what 
we say we believe to be the horror and disaster of 
sin, and the blessings of the pardoned soul, one 
would think that the demand for absolution would 


CONFESSION 


101 


be constant and imperative. And yet, bow few 
face the matter of confession at all, and of those 
who do, how few rise above the conception of an 
unpleasant duty? 

In urging the practice of confession upon 
adults, one is quite commonly met with an atti¬ 
tude of indifference, rather than active opposi¬ 
tion ; an attitude which may be summed up in this 
way: “ All you say may be true enough, but I 

have got along pretty well so far, and I do not 
see why I should change my practice.” 

Why should one who has never been to con¬ 
fession and has “ got along pretty well,” go to 
confession ? 

The answer seems plain enough. So far as I 
know it is the only definite means instituted by 
our Lord for the forgiveness of sin. This seems 
a difficult saying? Well, do you know of any 
other means ? I am of course talking of sin after 
baptism. 

There are to be sure plenty of promises in 
Holy Scripture addressed to the penitent sinner 
assuring him that his sin can be forgiven; there 
are plenty of assurances, in general terms of God’s 
willingness to forgive. But when I bring those 
promises into relation to my own need; when I 
ask, “How will God forgive me, a sinner; how 
am I to obtain the assurance that I am forgiven ”; 


102 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


what answer do I find ? Do I find any other an¬ 
swer than that of the Prayer Book that Almighty 
God hath given power and commandment to his 
ministers to declare and pronounce to his people, 
being penitent, the absolution and remission of their 
sins? Personally, I do not think that my sins 
have been forgiven because I have spent a longer 
or shorter time thinking about God’s promises, 
any more than I think that I am or should be 
clothed and fed if I were to sit down and think 
about God’s general promise to care for all his 
children. Of all general promises, whether of 
care, of guidance, of forgiveness, we have to seek 
the special means through which the thing prom¬ 
ised is to be actually acquired. Our Lord prom¬ 
ises in that wonderful discourse in the sixth chap¬ 
ter of the Gospel according to St. John, to feed 
us with himself; but when we ask how this is to 
be effected, the Church points us to the definite 
act of the Holy Communion. God calls all men 
to repentance and belief in him, but when we 
ask how is the heathen who has heard this Gospel 
Summons to make his repentance and faith ef¬ 
fective in the acquirement of a Christian char¬ 
acter, we are directed to the definite act of Bap¬ 
tism. Ho one, in the Church at any rate, pro¬ 
poses to set aside the Sacrament of Baptism as 
the means of incorporation into the Body of 


CONFESSION 


103 


Christ and of the forgiveness of sins, on the 
ground that there are to be found in Holy Scrip¬ 
ture many passages which promise these things 
without any mention of baptism, and that, in¬ 
deed, the mention of baptism in the Gospels is 
not frequent. God’s general promises of the 
freedom and efficiency of Grace, and his exhorta¬ 
tions in general terms to receive grace, have never 
for a moment been imagined to make the recep¬ 
tion of the means of grace unnecessary; on the 
contrary, it is precisely in the means of Grace 
that the Church has thought to find the meaning 
and application of the general promises. Other¬ 
wise, why should God have established any means 
of grace at all? The general promises are in¬ 
terpreted by the institutions and applied through 
them. The Christian religion was preached as 
the way of Salvation; and when men, convinced 
by the preaching, asked, “ what shall I do to make 
my belief effective, what shall I do to be saved,” 
the answer invariably was, “ Eepent and be bap¬ 
tised.” I am utterly at a loss to understand why 
we should think all this is to be completely 
changed when we come to deal with mortal sin 
committed after baptism. The situation would 
seem to be unchanged. You have a sinner who 
hears the general promises of God to pity and 
pardon him, and who finds those general promises 


104 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


interpreted and applied through the Sacrament 
of Penance. Should we expect, knowing this, 
that they would for us be applied in some extra- 
sacramental fashion? We certainly should not 
say to the heathen: — if you are yourself satis¬ 
fied with your repentance and are content to rely 
on the general promises of God, you may safely 
ignore baptism, which the Christian Church has 
always believed to be the method of the personal 
application of those promises. 

There is of course no desire or attempt on the 
part of the Church to set limits to the pardoning 
grace of God. The Church is merely teaching 
the meaning of the revelation that she has re¬ 
ceived. What may be God’s action outside of his 
revelation we do not attempt to determine, neither 
has the Church taught that sacramental confes¬ 
sion is necessary with the necessity of salvation in 
all cases. The Church has not taught that con¬ 
fession is necessary in the case of venial sin for 
the obvious reason that it defines venial sin to be 
such sin as does not destroy that relation of the 
soul to God that was established at baptism; 
not being out of the u State of Salvation ” as 
the Catechism calls it, in which we were placed 
at and by baptism, there is no absolute need of 
a sacramental re-integration of that state. The 
Church has not even ventured to say that in the 


CONFESSION 


105 


case of a mortal sin the sacrament of penance is 
absolutely necessary; on the contrary, we are 
taught that if we make an act of perfect peni¬ 
tence, of perfect faith and love — forgiveness fol¬ 
lows. Only the limitation suggests itself; if we 
know of the Sacrament of Penance established as 
the normal means for the forgiveness of post- 
baptismal sin, and decline to use it , have we any 
right to think our act of faith and love complete ? 
Such acts of faith and love in a perfect act of 
penitence must he held, in the Church at least, 
and by instructed churchmen, not as a possible 
alternative of the Sacrament of Penance, but as 
a refuge when we cannot obtain, or obtain at 
once, sacramental absolution. We cannot con¬ 
ceive that our Lord has instituted an unneces¬ 
sary sacrament, or one that under the circum¬ 
stances of its application, we can use or not, as 
we choose. Let it be that we can be forgiven in 
response to a perfect act of contrition; but are 
we entitled to think very highly of our contrition 
if we make it the excuse for our neglect of the 
ordinance of God? 

But, it is said, the Church itself only bids me 
go to a priest when I am unable to quiet my own 
conscience. I should suppose that one might 
quiet one’s own conscience, that is, make a satis¬ 
factory act of contrition, if one were very sure 


106 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


that one’s sins were only venial sins, that is sins 
that left one still in a state of salvation and 
therefore in union with God. The sin that so 
disturbs the conscience that one cannot of one¬ 
self quiet it, is mortal sin. In that case the sae- 
rament and application of the Blood of Christ 
is needful. If it is objected that as a matter of 
fact consciences do get quieted without the use of 
the sacrament, one can only say that there are 
more ways than one of quieting them. Again; 
have we a right to quiet consciences if we ignore 
these divine methods ? 

In any case we are more sure, indeed we are 
only sure, of the completeness of our repentance 
when we have done all that we can to show our 
sorrow. And does not “ all we can ” include the 
Sacrament of Penance ? Iam concerned in a most 
serious matter — the forgiveness of my sin. 
Shall I ask, “ What are the easiest terms on which 
I can he forgiven ” ? Shall I bargain and chaffer 
with my God about my salvation? I want for¬ 
giveness for my sin, and if I feel that a real want 
the most I can do is all too little. 

But — the objection comes from another direc¬ 
tion— but in such matters as forgiveness I feel 
that I want to deal with God directly; at such 
times the child needs to come frankly to the 


CONFESSION 


107 


father, and I want nothing between my soul and 
God. 

If you consider a sacrament as something be¬ 
tween your soul and God all the answer that I 
have to make is that God 'placed it there . For 
myself, a sacrament is not something placed be¬ 
tween my soul and God any more than (to use 
a homely illustration) a piece of bread is some¬ 
thing placed between my hunger and its appease¬ 
ment. Sacraments are not obstacles keeping us 
from God, but divinely appointed means of ac¬ 
cess to God. On your premises, the very incar¬ 
nation of God himself whereby he takes our na¬ 
ture in order that he may lay hold of us and 
bring us into union with God is an obstacle! And 
moreover is there not a little unreality about this 
difficulty? You do not feel it anywhere else. 
You do not advance it in the case of baptism, 
which, like penance, is a sacramental forgiveness 
of sin. You do not plead then that the child 
should come to its father without the intervention 
of a priest. You do not advance it in confirma¬ 
tion and say that in your opinion, you shall re¬ 
ceive the gifts of the Holy Spirit because you 
ask them of your Father, and that you do not 
need or want the intervention of a bishop be^ 
tween your soul and God. You do not advance 


108 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


it in the Holy Communion, and say that the 
strengthening and refreshing of your soul shall 
be the outcome of seeking the Father without the 
intervention of a priest. When you or your 
friends are ill, you do not say, let them pray to 
their Father themselves. We want no prayers 
of the Church or any human intervention. Why, 
then, do you say these things in the special case 
of the forgiveness of post-baptismal sin ? Is 
there not a certain unreality in such objections ? 

There are those who say, “ on the whole, I ad¬ 
mit and believe what you say about the necessity 
of confession and absolution, only I do not follow 
you when you imply that absolution is to be ob¬ 
tained, or perhaps I should say, only obtained, 
after private confession. The Church in the 
public services provides a general confession, and 
follows it by an absolution. As that is the pro¬ 
vision of the Church, it must be quite sufficient.” 
It must indeed be quite sufficient for the purposes 
for which it is intended . But what the Church in¬ 
tends to do is not at all to convey a sacramen¬ 
tal absolution. The General Confession in the 
Prayer Book is not a confession of sins with a 
view to absolution, but an acknowledgment of 
sinfulness in general terms, and is in the nature 
of an act of contrition. The absolutions which 
follow the general confessions are not absolutions 


CONFESSION 


109 

in the sense of acts conveying forgiveness, but 
what are known as ritual absolutions. They are 
solemn prayers for forgiveness such as are used, 
and have constantly been used by laymen — such 
as are used, for instance, by the priests and serv¬ 
ers in their preparation to celebrate the Holy 
Communion. 

No: We must face the fact squarely; if we are 
declining the use of sacramental confession we 
are simply trusting to the adequacy of a repent¬ 
ance which shrinks from the pain and humiliation 
involved in forgiveness in the special way our 
Lord has appointed. Do not confuse the issue. 
What I have been stating above has always been 
the formal teaching of the Church as witnessed 
by its official documents. We do not care to ac¬ 
cept as a substitute for that formal teaching the 
words of private teachers or the example of times 
of laxity. What we need to look to for our guidance 
is not the example of lax or indifferent or wordly 
and uninstructed people, but the teaching of the 
Church and the practice of the Saints. 

In my experience as a priest of the Anglican 
Church the people who are drawn to the use of 
confession are of two kinds. There are those who 
have sinned much and have come to feel the 
fruitlessness and the oppression of sin. Their 
resort to confession is born out of their great and 


110 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


sore need. Without hesitation, without inter¬ 
posing fruitless objections, just because they need 
to be rid of sin, they come to lay their sins at 
the feet of Jesus and receive his gift of pardon 
and peace. Their sins, which are many, are for¬ 
given because their resort to Jesus is so whole¬ 
hearted, so trustful, so self-condemning. The 
other kind of men and women who use the sac¬ 
rament of penance habitually are those who love 
much. They have not many sins, but because 
they love our Blessed Lord so much the few sins 
they have are to them as great ones because they 
measure all sin in terms of the Divine Love, 
which all sin offends. They come to Jesus in the 
fulness of a great love and long to pour out their 
hearts to him and to receive the assurance of his 
pardon. But there are other men and women — 
and they are the hardest to deal with — 
who have no depth of experience on one side or 
the other, who have not come to feel the need of 
God in any pressing way. Until they feel the 
need they will hardly resort to this sacrament. 

There are other persons, a large class, whose 
failure to resort to this sacrament for the for¬ 
giveness of their sins is due, not so much to doubt 
or prejudice, as to the fact that the truth has 
never been adequately presented to them. They 
have not thought about the matter. If they have 


CONFESSION 


111 


heard of confession it has been as a Roman prac¬ 
tice or as a “ High Church ” imitation. It has 
not occurred to them to ask whether it might not 
possibly be more than that — a means of grace 
for their own souls. When they do so question 
the matter, when they find in confession a means 
of grace used by the universal Church and find 
in themselves the great need of just this grace, 
they come humbly and gladly to our Lord in his 
sacrament and there find rest for their souls. 

There are other people, who, without any ex¬ 
perience of their own, or seeking any, are in¬ 
fluenced by the talk and prejudices of others. 
There has been, and is, a vast amount of talk 
against confession. But talk by whom? Talk 
by people who have never been to confession for 
the most part. I do not know that in any other 
department of human knowledge the words of the 
ignorant are held to outweigh the word of the 
experienced. The testimony in favor of confes¬ 
sion comes from those who regularly practice it. 
If you do not go to confession and want testi¬ 
mony in regard to it, find someone who goes reg¬ 
ularly and ask them for their experience. 

We hear much of the danger of going to con¬ 
fession. The danger of acquiring a formal re¬ 
ligion; the danger of undue priestly influence, 
and so on. I suppose we have only to open our 


112 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


eyes a little upon the fact of the religious life of 
America to see at least this much; that the prac¬ 
tice of confession is at any rate not the sole cause 
of formalism and exaggerated clerical influence. 
A formal person is formal under any religious 
environment, and perhaps the best way of find¬ 
ing one’s fault and getting rid of it, is contact 
with an experienced confessor. And as to undue 
clerical influence, it is exerted much more in those 
quiet confidential talks which people who do not 
go to confession like to have with their pastor, 
“who is so sympathetic”—than in the confes¬ 
sional. People with the sort of character that 
needs to lean on somebody, will find somebody to 
lean on; and they will not lean less hard on a 
clergyman who denounces confession than on one 
who practises it. There are no doubt dangers 
in the practice of confession as there are dangers 
in the practice of any conceivable thing in which 
human beings are concerned, from eating and 
drinking up. But it seems to me that the mem¬ 
bers of the Anglican Communion have been so 
thoroughly instructed during the past three cen¬ 
turies in the dangers attendant upon the practice 
of confession that we can afford to drop that side 
of the subject for a while and insist for the pres¬ 
ent on the at least equal dangers of neglecting the 


CONFESSION 


113 


practice — the dangers of inadequate repentance 
and of despising the institution of Christ. 

But finally there is this last stronghold of lax¬ 
ity, 66 Yes, all you say is certainly true. But con¬ 
fession should be an occasional thing, lest we 
grow to depend upon it too much. After all, it 
is a medicine, not a food.” Quite true, and you 
might go on to say; u we only take medicine when 
we are ill.” That would complete your illustra¬ 
tions, would it not ? Quite true, I would not for 
a moment think of advising anyone to go to con¬ 
fession who has no sin on his conscience . If you 
have not sinned since you last made your con¬ 
fession, do not go. If you can keep out of sin 
till the end of your life do not go. Quite true: 
Confession should be an occasional thing, the only 
occasion for it is sin. Quite true: Confession is 
a medicine, and the only excuse for taking it 
is that you are ill, that is, have sinned,— that is 
all quite plain. We seem to be in complete agree¬ 
ment. 

But I am ready to go even further than you ap¬ 
pear to want to go. I should not advise anyone to 
go to confession as often as they sin. Sin is not, 
in my experience, a rare and infrequent thing, 
but a very common thing. But I do not there¬ 
fore advise a use of confession as frequent as 


114 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


sin. Rather I would advise a regular use of con¬ 
fession, just as I would advise a regular use of 
the Holy Communion. Confession should not be 
occasional in the sense of irregular. Just how 
frequent it should be is a thing to be determined 
by the needs of an individual. But it should be 
regular and systematic because, in the first place, 
all religious practices that are to have a normal 
and healthy effect need to be regular and system¬ 
atic, and, in the second place, because the func¬ 
tion of confession is not merely the immediate 
cleaning of the soul but the reformation of the 
life by the up-rooting of habits of sin, and the 
in-planting and training of habits of holiness. 

For — and this is commonly lost sight of — 
the regular practice of confession has benefits out¬ 
side of and in addition to the fact of forgiveness. 
It solidifies the practice of self-examination and 
leads to a clearer self-knowledge. It is wonder¬ 
ful how a few months’ practice of confession clari¬ 
fies the spiritual understanding and effects an 
adequate self-knowledge — a self-knowledge which 
is the absolutely indispensable prerequisite to the 
improvement of character. It produces a care¬ 
ful and a watchful life. One is continually sur¬ 
prised, in first confessions, at the complete ignor¬ 
ance of intelligent men and women of the mean¬ 
ing and bearing of their daily acts. 


CONFESSION 


115 


And this forgiveness is not all that we obtain 
in this sacrament. Because confession is a sac¬ 
rament it confers sanctifying grace. It heals the 
wounds of the soul and restores, in case of mortal 
sin, the union with God that we have lost. I 
think we fail to dwell sufficiently on this healing 
and strengthening side of the sacrament. It can¬ 
not be insisted upon too much. In this lies the 
meaning of regular confession and the confession 
of venial sins. Our souls are strengthened and 
refreshed for the spiritual combat whenever we 
receive absolving grace. We are thereby for¬ 
warded in the progress of our sanctification. 

In conclusion, I would like to say that it seems 
to me that members of the Anglican Communion 
should realise how great a responsibility the 
Church laid upon them, when at the Reforma¬ 
tion it ceased to impose confession by authority, 
and left it as a privilege which the individual 
must appreciate for himself. We need to realise 
how completely the Church has thrust the re¬ 
sponsibility upon the individual for accepting and 
using, or rejecting this sacrament. 

It is no light responsibility, and anyone re¬ 
jecting the use of the divinely established means 
for the forgiveness of sins should act in the full 
sense of the responsibility. 

For myself, I like to look on this, and all 


116 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


other sacraments, as manifestations of the divine 
love for souls. I like to see here one more path 
by which our Lord is seeking to lead the soul to 
him. How wonderful is the seeking love of our 
Lord — the love that will not be discouraged or 
overcome by the obstacles that our sins interpose 
between it and our soul’s only good. We do not 
find ourselves altogether able to abstain from sin, 
but we find in ourselves a growing abstinence and 
a growing hatred of sin. We find a growing long¬ 
ing for purity. These two longings, the longing 
of our souls for purity, and the longing of our 
Lord to purify us, meet here in the Sacrament of 
Penance, where our souls attain what they long 
for when he washes away our sins in his most pre¬ 
cious blood, and fills us with the grace of his in¬ 
dwelling Presence and sanctifies us to himself. 
Is there any joy like the joy of the forgiven soul ? 




* 






SIXTH MEDITATION 


i j 


i 


\ i 








I 


» 




































SIXTH MEDITATION 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


Let us listen to the words of our Lord - 
3E are the salt of the earth.” 



Try to picture to yourself — 

The most Christian person you have ever known. 
Among other things that you recall about this 
person is this: he was a great power for Christ; 
wherever he went he was felt as a distinct and 
positive influence for good. You recall that peo¬ 
ple depended upon him for sympathy; they opened 
their hearts to him, they sought his advice; they 
trusted him. And yet he never put himself for¬ 
ward, never seemed in the least degree to seek 
119 


120 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


power. Ask youself ? What was the secret of his 
influence? He was the most Christian person I 
have ever known. 

Consider, first — 

That it is the function of the Christian to re¬ 
flect the power of Christ, the life of Christ. The 
lake reflects the sun, but only partially; so our 
lives reflect back something of the Christ who has 
influenced them. The amount of our Christian 
influence is proportionate to the degree in which 
we have been influenced. To have no positive 
Christian influence is to have been uninfluenced. 
Our business in the world is to influence the world 
for Christ. Salt saves other things. It is a 
source of power. 

Consider, second — 

All your life you have been taking in. When 
you were a child you were regenerated and made 
God’s child by adoption and grace. You were 
taught all the articles of the Christian Faith. 
You have had all the privileges of Christian Wor¬ 
ship and Christian Sacraments. All the gifts 
of the Incarnation have been yours. What for? 
Just that you might be a sponge ? Have you ever 
felt the obligation of possession? Much will be 
required from those to whom much has been given. 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


121 


Much has been given you — all the riches of the 
Kingdom of God. What have you rendered back ? 

Pray, then — 

That you may recognise your responsibility to 
the Kingdom of God. Pray that you may be 
filled with zeal for the rule of Christ in this world. 
Pray that you may understand the power of per¬ 
sonal influence. 

O blessed Lord Jesus, help me to use the grace 
Thou hast given, and pardon my misuse of it in the 
past. 

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of 
thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bring¬ 
ing forth the fruit of good works, may by Thee be 
plenteously rewarded: Through Jesus Christ our 
Lord. 


Our Lord does not contemplate the members of 
His Kingdom living apart, without contact with the 
world. Some may do so for a time, or for special 
purposes, or as the result of a special vocation. But 
the vocation of most men and women is to live in 
close and intimate contact with all those influ¬ 
ences which flow from the social organisation, to 
share in the hopes and struggles of their com¬ 
munity, to influence and be influenced by daily 



122 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


contact with other lives. And at the same time 
our Lord does expect that there will be a clearly 
perceptible difference between the members of his 
Kingdom and those other human beings who are 
not so related to him. “ Be ye not conformed to this 
world, but be ye transformed ”: “ Ye are the salt 
of the earth ”: “ Ye are the light of the world ”: 
There is something about the Christian which dif¬ 
ferentiates him from the society of which he is a 
member. 

This implies an attitude that is not very easy to 
keep, a plant of life not easy to live up to. What 
it demands of us is really the power to live in the 
midst of a society, many of the motives of which 
are not Christian, and whose acts are often in¬ 
different or hostile to Christianity, and still main¬ 
tain without wavering our own principles. This 
implies a great power of control, and steadiness 
of mind and will, a power to stand alone if need 
be; in short, a strength of character which is not 
altogether common. It is much easier to “with¬ 
draw from the world”: to stand aside from the 
mixed interests of our fellows; to hold aloof from 
things “ secular,” and pursue our Christian voca¬ 
tion as much as may be in congenial surroundings 
and in congenial society. But this would not ap¬ 
pear to be the fulfillment of a Christian’s vocation 
at all. “Ye are the salt of the earth”; an ele- 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


123 


ment that must be mixed with human society in 
order to its purification. 

What is implied, therefore, is not simply a 
passive power of resistance in virtue of which we 
may manage to keep ourselves clean and pure in 
the midst of a world that does not care over 
much for cleanliness and purity, but an aggres¬ 
sive and militant power as well. It will not do 
just to hold on to our religion. That is a very 
common mistake of well meaning Christians. 
Their religion to them is a very sacred thing which 
they hide in the privacy of their own lives. In 
the midst of hostile influences and possibly open 
attacks on Christian faith and morals, they bear 
themselves silently, without protest or witness. 
Their Christianity is to be inferred from their 
abstentions rather than from their activities. I 
do not mean, of course, that we are always to be 
ostentatiously testifying; but still, with whatever 
necessary avoidances, we have a mission of wit¬ 
ness — we are missionaries. It is our duty to 
make plain to the world the power that the Gospel 
is to us. People are constantly saying: I do not 
see any difference between those who profess 
Christianity and many who do not. The man 
who frankly accepts this world as the final fact 
so far as human knowledge can tell him, is not less 
kind, is not less possessed of the helpful virtues, 


124 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


is not a less valuable member of human society, 
and, indeed, in your Christian vocabulary, is not 
more worldly, and more devoted to material gains 
and material pleasures, than those who are the 
members of churches. What a reproach! Is this 
the true presentation of Christian society? Do 
you recognise yourself in the picture ? Is it true 
that you are living in the same way, desiring the 
same things, working for the same ends, as the 
man who “ makes no profession 99 ? 

We are not solitaires; we live in a world of 
other beings like ourselves, and our lives touch 
their lives. And out of this touch of life upon 
life are bom duties. God would have it so; and 
the answer to the Cain-cry, “ Am I my brother’s 
keeper ” is just, yes. You are your brother’s 
keeper to the extent and in the degree of your 
possible influence upon him for good or for evil. 
You cannot set an example of evil before your fel¬ 
lows, and say: Well, if he falls that is his fault; 
I exercised no compulsion; he has a free will as 
well as I. You cannot live a life that contents 
itself with low ideals and say: It is not my fault 
if society is not better than it is, I do my duty. 
You cannot turn your back on opportunities of 
helpfulness and say: Well, it is not my business. 
Can I not do what I will with my own? No; 
plainly not. You have no own; all that you have 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


125 


is God-given trust for the use of which you must 
ultimately give account. 

Duty is horn out of the mere fact of contact. 
Sympathy is not something that we owe to our 
friends. It is an obligation to all life about us. 
It is in the first place an obligation to make an 
effort to understand others. There is so much of 
the trouble of life that is directly traceable to our 
failure to understand one another. How often do 
we attempt to approach the lives of others with a 
sympathetic touch. Is it not rather true that in 
our approach to others we permit ourselves to take 
dislikes, to he influenced by prejudices? Those 
first impressions that we sometimes pride ourselves 
on as being evidences of our insight into charac¬ 
ter, how apt they are to he mistaken. It is very 
rarely that we can judge of another from first im¬ 
pressions with any likelihood of being just. The 
giving way to first impression, and allowing our¬ 
selves to be influenced by peculiarities of man¬ 
ner, or the passing words of a first conversation, 
too often erects a wall between us and those whose 
lives we might have influenced for good, or who 
might have been a good influence in our lives had 
we given time to the patient understanding of 
them. Antagonisms and alienations grow up 
where friendship and helpfulness might have been. 
Where lives have different backgrounds of social 


126 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


circumstance and education there is usually some 
effort required to effect a mutual understanding. 
We each speak our own dialect, and do not easily 
understand one who speaks in another. We tend 
to regard our social and religious and intellectual 
habits and customs as the norm to which others 
must conform. We decline to make the effort 
which is necessary to see that other habits and 
customs have, perhaps, as good a right to exist 
as our own. So we get antagonistic, and there 
was no need of it; we only needed to be a little 
patient. 

And then that other sympathy which is the high¬ 
est of human ministries one sometimes thinks; 
that power that we cannot analyse but can feel so 
keenly, which the old word fellow-feel expresses so 
well. What a wonderful endowment of our na¬ 
ture that is which gives us the power of soothing 
and consolation and enables us to stand by suffer¬ 
ing and grief and make it more tolerable. It is a 
power that lies not in any word that we say, but 
just in the fellow-feeling which makes itself known 
without words. Surely there is no ministry that 
we need to be more watchful of than this, because 
it gives us such power of helpfulness in our rela¬ 
tion to others. It is such a simple ministry too, 
so easily fulfilled. But do we really grasp at the 
opportunities that come to us? Do we feel a 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


127 


Christian obligation in the matter of sympathy ? 
Again, it is not an obligation to those whom we 
love. “ If ye love them which love you, what re¬ 
ward have ye? Do not even the publicans the 
same ? ” 

It is the duty of the Christian to under¬ 
take the ministry of sympathy whenever there is an 
opportunity to exercise it, even to the evil and 
unthankworthy. This is his office because he is 
the minister and representative of Jesus, whose 
life was spent in sympathetic ministry. And the 
Christian is at such an advantage. He has conso¬ 
lation to offer in every case. There are many 
cases before which the unbeliever must remain 
dumb. But he who can offer the Gospel of Jesus 
need never be dumb. 

The wonderful thing about this power is that 
we all have it; not all in the same degree perhaps; 
but none of us is so lacking in this endowment as 
to be incapacitated for the ministry of sympathy. 
The dumb feeling is in our hearts, but we may not 
have accustomed ourselves to utterance. We can 
easily give ourselves the needful training if we 
will. We do not need to wait for the accidents 
of life to make demands upon our sympathies, 
but may ourselves find the opportunities for their 
exercise. It is well to have one or two lives to 
which we systematically minister. An old or ill 


128 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


person whom we regularly visit, a poor person into 
whose dreary life we bring a little warmth and 
brightness, a child whom we keep in constant touch 
with and guide as we may. Life is full of such 
opportunities of helpfulness the fulfillment of 
which requires very little of time or money, yet 
which enable us to increase the value of our lives to 
others, and, if that were the thing to consider, are 
in their reaction upon our own character, of un¬ 
measured significance. 

And then, to take a thought we touched upon 
a while ago, the responsibility for example in a 
narrow sense. I fancy that few people realise 
the power they are daily exercising. Whenever 
life touches life,— and the contacts are almost 
momently,— there is influence. The word, the 
glance, the gesture, conveys an impression of us to 
another. Those first impressions, which, as I said 
above, ought not to be trusted to, and which yet 
do influence so many — how often they are the 
result of some quite trifling act or word. A man 
is set down as a cynic, or a superficial trifler or 
an irreverent person, as the result of some act or 
word which very likely does not represent him at 
all. We leave people with an utterly false im¬ 
pression of our religion often, as the result of 
some careless remark by which we meant nothing. 
A certain guard over the lips is important to the 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


129 


Christian, a certain recollectedness of speech and 
action. 

And if this is true, where there is no bad in¬ 
tention back of acts and thoughts, how much more 
does example count where it becomes distinctly 
bad. We recognise this plainly enough in the ex¬ 
treme case. It is easy to see the pernicious re¬ 
sults of the example of a bad boy or man, easy 
to trace the track of ruin that he leaves behind 
him. But there are unnumbered ways of show¬ 
ing a distinctly bad example and using the life to 
work evil without going to the extreme. There is 
the father whom nothing ever suits; whose even¬ 
ing return from business is followed by com¬ 
plaints and disagreeable criticisms. He never 
sees why just that dinner is provided, or why the 
children have been permitted to do this or not 
made to do the other. Business has not gone very 
well that day, and the irritation occasioned by his 
lack of success is permitted to expend itself in 
making the home miserable. Naturally the chil¬ 
dren get out of the polluted atmosphere as soon as 
possible, perhaps to the more cheerful life of the 
street, and after a while the man wonders that they 
have gone bad. Did he not do all he could, pro¬ 
vide a good home for them, and so on? Then 
there is the wife who is always complaining. The 
man gets back from business and finds himself in 


130 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


an atmosphere of the kitchen, or of petty social 
squabbles. The children, again, are a fertile 
source of complaint. Or there is the family in 
which petty personalities, the faults of others and 
their peculiarities, are the staple of conversation. 
There is a continual running fire of carping criti¬ 
cism and gossip. There is the Sunday lunch 
after the father and mother have returned from 
church. One wonders just what impression of 
religion the children get then. In many cases it 
must be an impression of their priest as a very 
no account fellow who always does and says the 
wrong things. The general atmosphere of an 
American Sunday morning household, with its 
slothfulness, its up-set of usual habits, its hurried 
mother, its lounging father, its pervading tone of 
the Sunday newspaper, is quite enough to make 
atheists of any unfortunate children that dwell 
therein. The family lies at the very root of re¬ 
ligion and social order, and the average American 
family (I do not know anything about others), 
with its neglect of the ordinary Christian obliga¬ 
tions for merely frivolous reasons, its lack of 
prayer, its treatment of religion as a mere mat¬ 
ter of taste, its intermittent church going, its utter 
lack of any spirit of reverence or discipline, is 
about the worst example of the perversion of a 
holy thing that one will anywhere find. 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


131 


Society is possible at all only as tbe result of a 
certain amount of sacrifice of our individual lib¬ 
erty. The friction of life grows precisely out of 
our disinclination to sacrifice for others and our 
demands that they shall sacrifice for us. Anyone 
who is thoughtful of his possible influence on other 
lives will not be careful to stand on his individual 
right, will not adopt an attitude of continually 
warning off intruders upon his preserves, but will 
be quite willing upon occasion to waive the strict 
letter of his rights in order to have easier and 
freer intercourse with his fellows. Life is a 
process of give and take, and we have to learn to 
compromise with it; that is, we are not to expect 
to find that principles will always be worked out 
to their logical conclusions by those who hold 
them, or that those who are keenest in their as¬ 
sertion of their individual right will be equally 
keen in their recognition of the rights of others; 
but, discounting the certain failure in such re¬ 
spects, adjust our lives, not to the theory, but to 
the actual practice as we shall find it. There is 
much of the secret of peaceful living in knowing 
when to give way, and when it is not worth while 
to assert oneself. There are times, no doubt, 
when in the interests of peace itself we are bound 
to stand for right, even our own right, and for 
principle. But in daily intercourse right and 


132 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


principle are, in the long run, best served by a 
certain mobility which enables us to adjust our¬ 
selves quickly to varying circumstances. We shall 
perhaps best attain this by looking to the rights 
of others rather than to our own rights, by taking 
into consideration their time, their habits of 
thought, their convenience. In the family, for 
example, it is easy to overlook such considerations; 
to assert one’s own will and convenience in a man¬ 
ner that is little short of brutal. Because we have 
power to do a thing is no reason at all for doing 
it. In social life outside the family there is a 
certain pressure of good manners which restrains 
us from this kind of self-assertion; we do not 
dare be rude. But in the case of those with whom 
we are on familiar terms this pressure is removed. 
Many a girl who is honey-sweet in society is most 
difficult in the home. The man whom you met at 
dinner last night and who talked so delightfully, 
and was so considerate, turns out, if you see him 
in his own family, a mere tyrant riding rough¬ 
shod over all the rights of his wife and children. 
There are houses where one finds it extremely dis¬ 
agreeable to visit because of the perpetual family 
jars, the atmosphere of criticism and fault-finding, 
into which one is plunged. 

There are people who strike one as quite unfit¬ 
ted for the ordinary intercourse of life, people for 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


133 


whom there ought to be provided some sort of a 
sanitarium with trained specialists to teach the 
art of human intercourse. There seems to he no 
reason why men and women should be the slaves 
of egotism and evil tempers to the extent they are. 
I suppose there is nothing that people who are at 
all careful realise more keenly than their defects 
of temper, but they rarely show much zeal in the 
matter of self-correction. There really is no rea¬ 
son whatever for allowing one’s temper to get the 
upper hand of one. It is perfectly possible for 
any sane human being of adult years to control 
himself at least outwardly. If one cannot, one is 
insane. There is no need of going to pieces nerv¬ 
ously and disturbing the household or the office 
and putting everyone else in a state of nervous 
strain. The proof of the statement is that we 
do not do it unless we feel that we can do it with 
impunity. The man who rages about an office and 
swears at his employees manages to hold himself 
in under much more provoking circumstances at a 
meeting of a hoard of directors; just as a child 
who will cry, and howl, and kick the furniture in 
the home will not think of doing anything of the 
kind in the schoolroom. We can always manage 
self-control when we feel strongly enough that self- 
control is to our own interest. It is not necessary 
to waste much sympathy on people with uncon- 


134 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


trolled tempers. What they need is discipline. 

It is, I repeat, easy to gain external self-control 
aided as we are continually by social pressure. 
But it is quite another thing to gain internal con¬ 
trol when the only pressure is the pressure of 
principle. External control enables us to get on 
with people up to a certain point; but nothing but 
internal control enables us to get on with our¬ 
selves or with God. Neither, whatever may be 
our habit of external control, can we be quite sure 
that we are safe from an explosion of temper un¬ 
less we have ourselves well in hand within. Re¬ 
straint, after all, is only negative. What we need 
to assure our safety in this matter is the virtue of 
peaceableness. The crust of the earth is covered 
with flowers, but within are fires. 

This danger of explosions when the control we 
have of ourselves is only external and negative is 
well illustrated from the habit of internal brood¬ 
ing over slights or wrongs, real or fancied. There 
are temperaments with a morbid tendency which 
are continually on the look-out for injuries of one 
kind or another. Other people are objects of sus¬ 
picion to them, enemies who may make their hos¬ 
tility felt at any moment, and the probability is 
that they will not make their enmity felt by overt 
action of any sort, but in some stealthy and subtle 
way; they will insinuate an injury by some covert 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


135 


word, some carefully calculated shade of meaning, 
some partially concealed allusion, some veiled look. 
Such persons go back over an apparently innocent 
conversation and extract from it, in the retrospect, 
hidden and insidious meanings. They are the sort 
of person, whom, if you do not happen to notice 
them in a crowded street, are sure you intended 
to cut them. They twist the most innocent re¬ 
marks till they reveal hidden insults. The best 
that can be said of them is that they are diseased 
and unhappy and therefore deserve consideration 
and pity. But that is not what they need to say 
to themselves. They need to recognise such im¬ 
aginings as morbid phenomena which need to be 
taken sharply in hand and rooted out. They need 
to put a very severe check upon themselves and not 
for one moment heed or tolerate their diseased 
temper. 

It is not much better in cases where there is 
actually a basis in fact for temper to take hold of; 
when there has actually been a slight or injury 
of some sort. If there is anything to be done 
about it, it had better be done in the way of a 
frank talk with the person who is guilty of the in¬ 
jury. Nothing will ever be gained by brooding 
over it except self-disturbance. Yet this sort of 
self-disturbance precisely seems to be a kind of 
perverted joy to the morbid temperament, which is 


136 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


fertile in the art of dramatisation. The situation 
is reviewed internally with appropriate phrasing: 
u She said this and then I retorted that, to which 
she replied so and so, and I said crushingly.” 
This is not what actually did happen, but what 
ideally ought to have happened. Gradually an 
insignificant incident grows, under dramatic treat¬ 
ment, into a tragedy; but the tragedy is not in the 
incident itself, but in the wreck of charity in a dis¬ 
eased soul. 

Let it be that people are difficult to get along 
with; no doubt they are — there are all sorts of 
disagreeable people in the world — unreasonable 
people, rude people, uncharitable people, and all 
that. But just because they are in the world I 
have to manage to get on with them. I cannot go 
away and live in a cave, and I cannot entirely 
adjust my life and its duties so that I shall meet 
only congenial people. I have to get on with all 
sorts of men and women; and there is one thing 
that has always been a great help to me in this dis¬ 
tress, — and that is the thought that all these peo¬ 
ple have to get on with me. I fancy that I have 
a good many comers that hurt when you run into 
them, and thorns that prick when you lay hold of 
them — and yet, I get on. Let me then make al¬ 
lowances for the corners and thorns of other lives. 

It is injured self-love that is at the bottom of 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


137 


the matter. In the last analysis, the reason we 
complain is that we are not treated on the level of 
our own estimate of our deserts, and we are pained 
to think that our self-estimate is not that of the 
world at large; or we do not get our own way, 
and we are irritated at the balking of our will. 
It helps sometimes to inject a little humor into 
the situation, and to see the really amusing figure 
we should make were we really what our words 
and actions imply that we should like to be, the 
center of a group of admiring people who take us 
seriously in terms of our self-esteem. Really the 
salt of criticism and the friction of life upon life 
is a very healthy thing and prevents the growth 
of an exaggerated egotism. 

A very serious and far-reaching moral principle 
is involved in our relation to others; what moral¬ 
ists call the principle of scandal. Scandal, in 
morals, does not mean loose talk of an uncharitable 
kind about other people, but it means actions of 
such a nature as shall lead others into sin. S. 
Paul’s advice not to eat meat offered to an idol if 
there was anyone present who thought it wrong, or 
who would be led by the example of another to eat 
and thus violate his own conscience, is an illustra¬ 
tion of scandal. To induce by one’s example a 
person to play games on Sunday who was con¬ 
vinced that such acts are wrong would be scandal. 


138 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


You see at once how careful one needs to be lest 
one’s conduct scandalise others. I do not mean 
that we are on all occasions obliged to yield to 
other people’s prejudices, or that we may not try 
to convince them if we think them wrong, but 
only that we are not to lead them to do what is 
against their conscience. We say, in our rough 
way, this thing is either right or wrong; if it is 
right I may do it, if wrong, I may not do it. But 
not at all. That is the sort of morals that could 
only be practiced in a social vacuum. But we do 
not happen to live in a social vacuum. We are 
members of a society where life touches and influ¬ 
ences life constantly; and morals must involve not 
only the estimate of the moral nature of an act in 
itself, but an appreciation of its effect on others. 
And beside being social beings we are Christians, 
and as such bound by the obligations of charity. 
The law of charity will not permit us to lead a 
brother into what is sin for him, even though it is 
not sin for us. We are members of the body of 
Christ and have obligations toward all other mem¬ 
bers. Our obligation is one of edification and de¬ 
velopment. We are the salt of the earth with the 
function of preserving others. There are times, 
no doubt, when it is within our right and even 
may be a duty to assert our Christian liberty. 
JBut self-assertion is always a dangerous thing, and 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


139 


our ordinary obligation is not self-assertion but 
self-sacrifice. It is our undoubted duty to forego 
our liberty rather than to injure others. To go 
to the limit of allowed self-indulgence can only 
very rarely be a duty. Our ordinary duty is to 
strengthen our brethren. We ordinarily solve dif¬ 
ficult questions of conduct by approaching them 
positively; by asking, not what may I do, but what 
must I do. Life gets the proper orientation when 
we conceive ourselves as Christians with an ob¬ 
ligation to reveal God to others; that is, to show 
to others how far we have succeeded in reproduc¬ 
ing the life of Christ in ourselves. As members 
of the Christian Church we are intrusted with its 
good name,— which ought to be felt as a much 
deeper obligation than it usually is. It cannot 
be denied that the laxity of Christians inflicts 
more injury on the Church than all the assaults of 
unbelievers. Indeed, the assaults of unbelief find 
their chief support precisely in the laxity of Chris¬ 
tians. 

It is worth while to insist upon this danger of 
laxity. The Christian ideal is the highest con¬ 
ceivable ideal of life. Anyone who tries to live 
up to it can hardly help feeling a certain moral 
and spiritual strain. It is not the ideal of the 
society in which we live, and we are therefore con¬ 
scious and ought to be conscious of a certain sep- 


140 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


aration from that society. But we find it hard 
to keep this attitude, we find it difficult to sub¬ 
mit to the social inconveniences that are involved 
in it. Others are asking us, perhaps we are asking 
ourselves: — Why be quite so strict ? Religion is 
no doubt a good and necessary thing, but is it nec¬ 
essary to have so strict a religion? There are 
plenty of people who “ are as good as you are,” 
who are quite as esteemed members of the Church, 
who do not maintain this standard that you are 
trying to live up to. Surely, if you will study 
the lives of the members of the Christian Church, 
you will see that they manage to maintain the es¬ 
teem of the Christian community, and at the same 
time adjust themselves to life under modem con¬ 
ditions with much less friction than you do. 

We have all, I suppose, felt the stress of this 
argument and have, perhaps, at times dropped our 
standard in response to its seeming force. But 
the essence of the argument is,— is it not — that 
while we ought to be religious, we do not need to 
have a religion which is constantly interfering 
with and checking our desires? We must recog¬ 
nise with all frankness that we live in a society 
that is not Christian — of which neither the ends 
nor the means are chosen with any reference to 
Christian principles. What we have been taught 
are Christian ends and aims are scoffed at as 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


141 


Medievalism or Puritanism. Much of the mem¬ 
bership of the church has no doubt gone over to this 
point of view. Members of the Church do not keep 
[Friday as a day of abstinence. Sunday is being 
rapidly turned into a day of amusement. Are we 
to stand out for the customs of a by-gone age ? 

Now, no doubt, it involves a certain incon¬ 
venience. to have a religion that is constantly in¬ 
terfering with desired action. But it is precisely 
the point of religion — is it not — that it does so 
interfere; that it does involve self-limitations, and 
a certain separation from others ? What sort of an 
abortive performance is a religion that never in¬ 
terferes? Religion ought to interfere and ought 
to interfere much more than it does in the life of 
the average church member to-day. Things such 
as I have touched upon are gross and open scan¬ 
dals in the life of the Christian community. They 
earn for that community the well merited reproach 
of worldliness. Earnest people are shocked and 
the work of the Church is hindered; and such 
laxity, one is sorry to think, is especially preva¬ 
lent among those who call themselves Catholics; 
who appear to think that severity of life is a 
Protestant invention and that their repudiation of 
Protestantism may be known by the imitation of 
Roman laxity. There is need of a very stern call 
to strictness of life. 


142 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


The world, both religious and secular, is just 
now spending so much of its breath in calling us 
to be liberal that we have come to think it the last 
disgrace to incur the reproach of illiberality. Lib¬ 
erality is, no doubt, a very good thing. But when 
the word liberality becomes a mere piece of cur¬ 
rent slang, we need not pay much attention to it. 
As things stand at present, liberality seems merely 
the synonym for the abandonment of obligation. 
It is well to be liberal with the things that belong 
to us; but the Religion of Jesus Christ, is ours 
only as a trust, and to change its truths and scorn 
its obligations, and violate its principles is not 
liberality but betrayal of trust. And less than 
any liberality does the feeble and timid liberality 
of Churchmen appeal to one. The world laughs 
at the liberality which consists in tampering with 
sacred obligations, while still trying to hold on to 
the appearance of churchmanship. If we do not 
respect our religion no one else will. 

There is another matter that seems to me to need 
to be touched upon, though when I have touched 
upon it I have found it rather a sore subject. I 
mean the matter of social relationship, of the 
choosing of companions and friends. I have 
found, a little to my surprise, that people resent 
being told that religion has or can have anything 
to say in such matters. Yet it ought to be clear 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


143 


that the companionships of our lives are one of the 
chief formative influences that have been brought 
to bear on us. I should find it utterly impossi¬ 
ble to estimate the influence upon my life of such 
self-chosen friendships. People who care very 
much for their children are careful of their asso¬ 
ciations before all things. One of the strong ar¬ 
guments against public schools is that they expose 
children to undesirable companionship. Does the 
danger of an evil or the power of the good com¬ 
panionship cease as we grow older? I hear the 
impatient voice that says, we have to live in the 
world as it is. Truly, but in the matter of close 
relation with people, in the choosing of friends, 
we do actually make a selection, and the point 
that I wish to make is that this selection should 
be governed by principle, and that the principle 
should be that of possible mutual influence for 
good. We know all sorts of people; we are inti¬ 
mate with very few. Shall not the intimacies of 
a Christian be of a special kind? Narrow? 
Well, if you like; I am not much more afraid of 
being thought narrow than of being thought illib¬ 
eral. The fact is that I know, and you know, of, 
possibly, many cases, in which faith was made 
ship-wreck and the moral life gone to ruin just 
through the influence of badly chosen companions. 
I have on my desk at present a letter from a young 


144 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


woman who was, some years ago, under my direc¬ 
tion, who tells me that I will probably not be 
pleased to learn that “ she has given up creeds.” 
Why? Not in the least because as the result of 
prolonged study she has come to the conclusion 
that creeds have no obligations or place in modem 
religious life; but just simply because she has 
been living with a lax set of people, who talk the 
ordinary liberal slang about creeds. There are 
multitudes of such cases to-day, and there are other 
multitudes who “ have given up morals.” The 
influence of friendship and the importance of the 
choice of friends cannot be overrated, and it is 
absurd to say that Christian principles have noth¬ 
ing to do with so important a choice. 

One of the great powers of character is the 
power to stand alone. One feels sure that many 
of the failures of the moral and spiritual life are 
due to the lack of that power — the ability to 
stand out against criticism, against the silent pres¬ 
sure of example, against the constant pull of our 
social environment. If therefore one has got into 
a social environment that is unsympathetic with 
one’s aims and ideals, one finds one’s position by 
no means easy or pleasant. Unless one has great 
determination of character one is almost certain to 
be spiritually debilitated by the unwholesome at¬ 
mosphere in which one lives. Most people have 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


145 


little determination and are quickly responsive to 
the nearest influence. Society is filled with peo¬ 
ple of no moral stamina; people who mean well 
and want, on the whole, to serve God, but who 
actually do not effectively serve him but are given 
over to the world. They are moral jelly-fish ready 
to take any shape that the society they find them¬ 
selves in demands. They gradually lapse from 
the Christian standard of the Will of God to the 
worldly standard of what other people do. The 
pity of it is that they so rarely understand what 
they have done. They consider that occasional 
compliance with the externals of religion is the 
equivalent of a Christian life and a Christian 
service. 

When the obligations of discipleship are» 
pressed home upon us with any force, and it is 
pointed out how necessary it is that we should 
guard our influence and example, it is one of our 
temptations to say: All that may be true as a 
general statement of the case, but there are surely 
individual exceptions. It would be presumptuous 
for me to apply such reasoning to my own life be¬ 
cause it would attribute to me an importance that 
I do not possesss. I occupy no influential posi¬ 
tion. I am not of any importance at all. Do 
you really believe that? Or rather is it not the 
assumption of an apparent humility for the pur- 


146 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


pose of escaping the pressure of obligation ? How 
would you feel if one were to take your profes¬ 
sions at their face value ? If, for instance, I were 
to come in and say: Of course I know that you 
are a person of no importance, and it does not mat¬ 
ter at all what line you take in this matter, but 
still it would be a favor to me if you were to do 
so and so \ Would you like it ? It is perfectly 
true of most of us that we might not be of much 
importance elsewhere in life; but just where we 
are (if we have not utterly missed God’s will) 
there God has placed us, and this must be of im¬ 
portance. Your life has some special significance 
in relation to the Kingdom of God. It has the 
significance of an appointed service. You are not 
to measure the importance of life by any social 
standard or position, but by God’s will as made 
known in your circumstances. If what God gives 
you to do is the darning of stockings or the wash¬ 
ing of dishes, it is of much more importance that 
you do that well, than that you dream of being 
a great philanthropist. The influence of a girl 
just out of school, in her family, in society, in the 
church, is not very large, is not the influence of a 
mature woman of wide social and religious experi¬ 
ence ; but is just as important for the girl that it 
be watched, and that all her work be done as under 


RELATION TO OTHERS 


147 


the eye of God with a deep sense of responsibility 
to him. 

There is always a grave danger of despising the 
opportunities of service and of influences that are 
really ours and of neglecting them for the sake 
of undertaking something more showy. At the 
present day certain kinds of social work are mak¬ 
ing strong appeals, and it is quite the thing to 
take part in them. I would not for a moment 
think of criticising them, or suggesting that their 
importance is over-rated. I am concerned with 
another question. It is one of the problems of 
modem parish life to find workers who will con¬ 
secrate themselves to the often dull routine of 
parochial activities. It is my experience that a 
great deal of the energy which belongs normally to 
the parish is drawn off to work which is not at any 
rate more useful, but is more popular and more 
fashionable. One needs to be very clear where 
one’s obligation lies, not where one’s inclination 
calls one; whether one is following a vocation or 
a taste. When I asked the sisters in charge of a 
certain mission house why they did not have stay¬ 
ing with them and helping them the class of people 
who were associated with a social settlement not 
far away, they told me that they could not get 
them because they required steadiness and disci- 


148 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


pline of their helpers. In other words, their in¬ 
sistence upon religion as the basis of their work 
stood in the way of its popularity. This is what 
people usually mean when they complain of the 
narrowness of church work. 

If you find yourself longing for wider influence 
and broader and more stimulating work, if you 
find your life limited and commonplace, it is a 
good test to ask yourself whether what you are 
really looking for is harder work; work that makes 
more demands upon your energy, your time, your 
sympathy; work that offers and requires more dis¬ 
cipline; or whether you are simply restless, or 
want to do the work that can be talked about and 
gives you a sense of being connected with a popu¬ 
lar thing. What God will require of us is an ac¬ 
count of what he gives us. “We are not required 
to make our own lives, but to make the most of 
whatever life is ours.” 

And to make it now. Influence is always a 
present thing. It is to-day that you have to ac¬ 
count for. “ Ye are the salt of the earth.” Are 
you? 


THE SEVENTH MEDITATION 


/ 


* 4 t 






THE SEVENTH MEDITATION 

WOKK 


Let us listen to the words of our Lord — 



MUST work the works of him that sent 
me, while it is day; the night cometh, when 
no man can work.” 


Let us picture — 

Our Incarnate Lord ministering to man. He 
is talking to the people who gather about him in 
some village street. His gracious words suggest 
to some poor soul which has been in despair the 
possibility of help. Some disease long despaired 
of, may perhaps be healed. Some sin, long hid¬ 
den, may he confessed and pardoned. Some need 
of another whom one loves may he brought to 
Jesus and satisfied. The thought is acted on, the 



152 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


need is brought to Jesus, and help is found. 
Think of the multitudes that our Lord thus helped 
of which there is no record in the Gospel. Daily 
our Lord was thus ministering. 

Consider, first — 

This is the work of him that sent him. He 
has a mission for this work; that he does it is one 
of the proofs that the Lather sent him. But this 
work of God — the need of doing it—-did not 
cease with the Ascension. It was handed on to the 
Church to do. It is now your work. By virtue 
of your baptism you have been made a member of 
the Body of Christ and a sharer in all its work. 
Each one of us takes up an allotted work in an 
allotted time; and then, time passes, the night 
cometh. Think of the night of death settling 
down slowly, silently, inevitably over your work. 
The night cometh . When the morning breaks it 
will be the judgment morning, when God shall 
judge every man according to his works. Is your 
work ready for the judgment? 

Consider , second — 

Life is given us as opportunity for work. God 
does not thrust work upon us in such wise that we 
have to act. That is not God’s way. But he 
gives opportunity. The opportunities that are be- 


WORK 


153 


fore even the narrowest life are practically bound¬ 
less. Each day presents them. Every life our 
lives touch offers them. 

Let us 'pray, then — 

That we may see life’s opportunities and realise 
them as calls of God. O God, open thou mine 
eyes. Let us pray that we may be more intent on 
God and less on self. That we may not be 
blinded by self-interest. Let us pray that we may 
see life as service. 

The night cometh — 

O Almighty Lord, and Everlasting God, vouch¬ 
safe, we beseech thee, to direct, sanctify, and gov¬ 
ern, both our heart and bodies, in the ways of thy 
laws and in the works of thy commandments; 
that, through thy most mighty protection both 
here and ever, we may be preserved in body and 
soul; through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

It happens to a man to come into a fortune, a 
man who, perhaps, heretofore has been in narrow 
circumstances. Whatever else the unexpected 
fortune may mean to him, it at any rate means op¬ 
portunity. What will he do with it? He may 
just squander it in unwise financial operations 
or in idle dissipation. He may, by a more careful 



THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


154 

selfishness, still devote it to himself. Or, he may 
take a broader view of his responsibilities and 
devote it to philanthropical work, to the erection 
of large charitable foundations and the like. Or 
he may consecrate it to work that is directly re¬ 
ligious. It will be evident that the farther he 
gets away from himself in the use of it the better. 

At some time we have all come into the posses¬ 
sion of our fortune — life. That is, we have 
come to realise that we are in the possession of 
a power of wonderful possibilities. We may have 
passed a good part of our existence without think¬ 
ing at all about this, but the day comes when we 
do find it out. That is the day of our inheritance. 
The understanding gradually grows upon us, or 
comes suddenly; no matter, it comes. Life, a 
wonderful, God-given gift is ours. 

And the same question arises as in the case of ma¬ 
terial fortune. What are we going to do with it ? 
And the same lines of use are open. We can use 
it for self, for others, or for God. Life may be 
deliberately or carelessly thrown away in what 
seems the highest enjoyment of it, as we are seek¬ 
ing to extract from it the choicest sorts of self¬ 
gratification. It may be expended in noble effort 
to relieve the suffering of the world and to en¬ 
lighten its ignorance, or it may be devoted with 
passionate self-sacrifice to the work of God. 


WORK 


155 


I suppose we may define work as the expendi¬ 
ture of the energies of life. What we have to 
judge of is the nature of the expenditure. For 
what do we think it worth while to exchange our 
energy ? 

We are not so much concerned to discuss gener¬ 
ally life and its opportunities, as just one of them 
— work. But let us be clear, for all rests on this 
primary assumption, that our business in this 
world is God’s glory and our salvation — our sal¬ 
vation through God’s glory. The proper motto of 
every life is “ The greater glory of God.” 
Through my life God is being glorified. Back of 
everything we undertake, because back of the whole 
of life, is the thought — the Glory of God . 

Work gets its impulse from God and not man. 
There is where we part company with the hu¬ 
manitarian. He holds that the sight of human 
misery and human need is in itself sufficient to in¬ 
spire our efforts on behalf of others. But while 
one would not deny or belittle humanitarian ef¬ 
forts in any degree, or underestimate the immense 
amount of good they accomplish, still, one must 
insist that the humanitarian theory is insufficient. 
One is convinced that if it were ever to become the 
sole motive for good works, good works would 
largely vanish. At present humanitarianism is 
supported not by its own theory of itself, but by 


156 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


the reflex action of Christian ideals. Centuries 
of training have produced in the mind of nations 
subject to the influence of Christianity certain con¬ 
victions as to the obligations we owe to our neigh¬ 
bors in the way of helpfulness and sympathy. For 
a time it is possible for individuals to abandon 
the Christian dogmas upon which such convictions 
ultimately rest and retain the convictions them¬ 
selves. But only for a time. The living without 
Christian beliefs will at length necessitate the de¬ 
velopment of ideals which are in accord with what¬ 
ever beliefs we are actually basing our lives upon. 
An unchristian society will develop a social and 
utilitarian morality based on materialism, and 
from the point of view of such a morality it will 
be socially advisable to deal with problems of suf¬ 
fering by the elimination of the sufferer. I do 
not see how it will be possible from the point of 
view of materialistic morality, to take any ground 
other than that the criminal, the insane, the in¬ 
curable, will be better put out of their misery and 
society will be improved if relieved of the bur¬ 
den of their support and the danger of their propa¬ 
gation. Such a “ scientific morality 99 is indeed 
well over the intellectual horizon. There is no 
firm ground for our present attitude towards our 
suffering brethren except that they are brethren; 
the children of the same father, the redeemed of 


WORK 


157 


the same Saviour, the sharers with us of the same 
hope of immortality. The work that we undertake 
for man is not really work for man; that is, it is 
not work for man for man’s sake, because he is 
a suffering animal like ourselves; but it is work 
for man for God’s sake, because we have received 
from God the command to love and cherish our 
brethren. 

The humanitarian example of our Lord is very 
easy to overstress. Jesus of Nazareth going about 
doing good is a marvelously attractive figure, but 
is very far from being an adequate account of 
the work and aim of the Incarnate Son of God. 
The ultimate account of his mission is that we 
may have life; that through union with him we 
may be made partakers of the divine nature,— a 
union which involves all that we mean by salva¬ 
tion from sin and death. In the prosecution of 
this his incarnate work he showed the loving char¬ 
acter of God in his contact with human lives. 
He healed and pardoned. But no one who has 
studied the gospel carefully would for a moment 
infer that such activity was of the essence of his 
mission. Bather it is, as has been said, a by¬ 
product of that mission. And it remains a by¬ 
product and not the essence of Christianity. The 
Christian church is not a benevolent society. It 
is the Body of Christ intent on the edification of 


158 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


that body in holiness and perfectness of living. 
Benevolence is an inseparable accident of its life, 
as it is the common life of a brotherhood. 

That is, I do not care for man as a superior 
kind of animal with a material and mortal life. I 
do not find man, from that point of view, very in¬ 
teresting. No doubt there are people who do 
care for man considered from that point of view 
and are willing to minister to his material wants 
and found hospitals for the relief of his suffer¬ 
ings; just as there are other people who are tre¬ 
mendously interested in cats and puppy-dogs, and 
leave fortunes to erect hospitals for them. But 
such are oddities of the strange human race. In 
the long run, however, any sustained and widely 
effective work for man must rest, not on love of 
man as man, but love of him as the child of God; 
that is, it is ultimately resolvable into the love of 
God. God has revealed his love for man — for 
sinners and sufferers, and I, a sinner and a suf¬ 
ferer, have experienced that love. I want to pass 
on my experience and bring men to the knowledge 
of that love that they too may experience it. 
More than that, as a member of the Body of 
Christ, I am commissioned to carry on the work 
of the Incarnate. My work for man is, like his, 
the extemalisation of the love of God; the contin- 


WORK 


159 


uation of the work of making God known to the 
world. 

If, therefore, my work ceases to have any out¬ 
look towards God, if it ceases to derive its own op¬ 
eration from his love, it ceases, by that very fact 
to be a religious work. It may still be in a limited 
way a useful work; the work of a man who does 
not believe in God has still its social usefulness; 
he may endow education and research, build hos¬ 
pitals, found libraries, and so on. But a Christian 
is bound to take other than social ends into ao- 
count. He does not believe that you can per¬ 
manently advance humanity in the world now, if 
you leave out of your account the spiritual na¬ 
ture. Therefore the Christian is bound to see 
to it that his work is Christian work. It is bound 
to aim beyond the ideal of material comfort, 
which at present is the exclusive aim of so much 
work for men, to the permanent enrichment of 
man’s spiritual nature. It is sad to see so much 
of the activity of Christians — I cannot say Chris¬ 
tian activity — going to the up-building of in¬ 
stitutions that make no provision for the spiritual 
needs of those whom they are intended to benefit. 
It is sad to see so many “ church ” schools and 
colleges and general institutions, in which the 
provision for religion is merely routine and nom- 


160 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


inal, and where the great work of conversion is 
neglected. 

God has willed that his work in this world shall 
be carried on through men. Men are brought 
to salvation through human energy. Whether the 
child is brought up to be a Christian or no de¬ 
pends on the human beings to whom it is com¬ 
mitted; whether it knows and practises its Chris¬ 
tian obligations depends upon those who have the 
charge of its education. Whether the Kingdom 
of God grows in the world, whether the heathen 
are converted, all this is in human hands. We 
dwell frequently enough on the fact of our de¬ 
pendence upon God — often times with a back- 
thought of excusing our lack of effectiveness by 
God’s lack of activity. But do we ever under¬ 
stand the way in which God depends upon us? 
That the failure which we think of as the failure 
of God is in reality our failure. We some times 
question the slowness of God’s work, and say, 
How long, O Lord, how long? But is not the 
questioning rightly, the other way; How long, O 
man, how long? There has never been any lack 
of divine power or of divine will. What has 
been lacking has been human will and cooperation. 
The reason that the world is not converted, the 
reason that you are not converted, if so be you are 


WORK 


161 


not, is not that God has not willed it, but that 
you have not willed it. 

Let us get clear, then, that what we are called 
to in this life is God’s work. It is very futile 
to say, I have not time. You have not time for 
anything else. Your time is God’s time. Let 
us get the right emphasis. Keligion is not an 
avocation, a taste to be gratified if we can afford 
it, an ornament to a life that has time and means 
for such luxuries; religion, the service of God, 
the realising of the life of union, is the very mean¬ 
ing of our existence, the thing that makes us not 
to be beasts; and all else is by-product. You have 
not time for anything else. Imagine yourself 
standing, as finally you must stand, before the 
judgment seat of God, in the midst of a vanishing 
world, and saying, I had no time to give to your 
service. You have all the time there is; are you 
using it with a sense of the urgency of your 
Christian vocation, with a sense of the coming 
night ? 

For most people the matter of time is a matter 
of order and forethought. We waste so much 
time because of the lack of any order or rule 
in its expenditure. How many minutes go by 
in the day and we doing nothing. There are no 
doubt many people in this world whose whole 
day is crowded. I am not unmindful of them, 


162 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


and the modification, of religious problems that 
their circumstances necessitate. Their lives are 
not any the less bound to he religious lives, and 
I will have a word to say to them after a little. 
The life that I am speaking to now is a life 
which is capable of religious activity in another 
sense and in other ways than those. Not a life 
under greater obligations, but under changed ob¬ 
ligations of expression. Lives into which much 
of religious activity can come and needs must 
come if they are to meet the thought of God for 
them. 

This presentation of the obligations of Chris¬ 
tian work will not seem hard or strange to us, if 
our work has indeed that impulse that I have 
spoken of. As an obligation pressed on an un¬ 
willing life it may indeed seem hard; but if we 
have understood, in some dim way, that Christian 
work is the externalisation of the love of God, 
the setting of that love free to act in this world, 
we shall surely try to rise to the level of our re* 
sponsibilities. Of course it is impossible to 
struggle on in an unselfish work when one’s only 
motive is self. But if there rest in us the con¬ 
sciousness of being servants, of being called of 
God and sent forth in his name, endued with his 
strength, work is not only possible, it is joyful. 

For there will rest on us the awe of a great 


WORK 


163 


commission, the feeling that lies back of the 
Apostle’s cry — Woe is me if I preach not the 
gospel. That will call out in us the eager offer¬ 
ing of self, the readiness to spend and be spent 
in the service of him who gave himself for us, 
and now looks to us to bring his work to its per¬ 
fect conclusion. 

How life is dignified when we thus regard it. 
Your life has perhaps seemed narrow and use¬ 
less. You have looked over its confined borders 
and asked yourself; what is there that I can do ? 
You have felt yourself held in the grip of cir¬ 
cumstance, of toil, of poverty, of suffering, and 
longed to be free of these things that you might 
make your life one of greater usefulness. The 
chance of any helpfulness coming from you to 
other lives has seemed so very slight, you have 
so limited an opportunity of usefulness that it 
seems negligible. And you have sighed: O, if 
I were elsewhere, under other circumstances! 

Such thoughts, natural as they are, omit the 
fact, do they not? that God has given you just 
this life that you know. You have not stumbled 
into it by accident. And therefore, whatever 
service God may or can expect of you is a service 
under your conditions. He did not call you to 
be a pioneer missionary, or the founder of some 
great religious institution, and consequently does 


164 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


not expect this of you, nor are you to dream of it. 
God is asking you the service of your life just as 
and where it is. There are men, no doubt, whom 
God calls to give largely, to work strenuously, 
but that is not your vocation. What perhaps he 
asks of you is to spend a little time in visiting the 
sick, an hour in the work of Guild or Sunday 
School. It may he not even so much of what we 
look on as “ work ” as this. It may be to raise 
your soul to him in intercessions as you lie there 
in weakness and what you call helplessness, 
though you may be, who knows how helpful, 
through your prayers. It may be that what he 
wants is keener appreciation of the meaning of 
Christian example and teaching to the life of the 
child he has given you. The apparent size of 
the service is not of much importance, but not to 
miss the very service God meant for us is of the 
last importance. You perhaps are losing the op¬ 
portunity God sends while lamenting the oppor¬ 
tunity he does not send. Remember the man with 
one talent. Do not despise what belongs to you. 
It is a very easy form of charity to give away the 
millions of other people. If one had all the 
money that people would give if only they were 
able — if they had so and so’s fortune, one would 
be able to support all the works of the Church. 
Unfortunately such liberality does not help. The 


WORK 


165 


work of the Church is helped more by the dollar 
you could give, and do not, than by the millions 
you would give, and cannot. 

Do not imagine that the only work that has 
reference to God is so-called religious work. 
Every activity of our lives is capable of religious 
expression. We are not called to bring certain 
parts of our lives to God, but our whole lives. 
Herein lies the answer to that large class of per- 
sons whose time is fully occupied with the un¬ 
necessary toil that our present wretched social 
organisation imposes upon them. It is not that 
there are many who cannot take part in the or¬ 
ganised activities of the Church. But religious 
activity, the responsibility to God for service, does 
not begin and end with such activities. Even 
such pressed lives if they will, can make time for 
a good deal of earnest prayer. There are con¬ 
stant opportunities of helpfulness and sympathy 
in the very midst of the hardest work. And then 
a spirit of service can be put into all work. The 
shop, the office, the school, the household, are 
God’s, and the servant of God can show that he 
understands that, and lives by that ideal, by the 
way in which he does his work. There is no un¬ 
sanctified work which is the work of a sanctified 
person. 

Let us try to get a higher point of view, let us 


166 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


approach work from the point of view of sacri¬ 
fice. Sacrifice means, in the last analysis, the 
offering of oneself. All work, therefore, acquires 
a sacrificial character in proportion, as through 
it we are offering ourselves to God. And we 
may look on our work — may we not — as a sac¬ 
rifice of thanksgiving ? We think what it means 
to us that we are the children of God; and per¬ 
haps it is better if we try to make it more per¬ 
sonal and think what is contained in the fact 
that I am the child of God and that for me the 
Lord Jesus died and rose from the dead; that 
to me he is even now giving abundant blessings. 
As I dwell upon his love and all that that love 
has meant and does presently mean in my life, 
the impulse of gratitude and love arises, and I 
ask myself; what can I do that shall in any de¬ 
gree show my appreciation of my Saviour’s love; 
that shall shadow forth however dimly my feel¬ 
ing for Him,— which shall test for me the reality 
of my love and gratitude ? 

Work is the way, is it not ? Work — the offer¬ 
ing back to God the energy that he has given; 
the direction of that energy into ways that are 
pleasing to him. God has given you the power 
of speech. Cannot you sanctify that gift by 
bearing the message of the Gospel to some soul 
still apart from God? Are there not those to 


WORK 


167 


whom you can tell the sweetness of that love 
which you have yourself experienced? God has 
given you, perhaps, the gift of teaching — are 
you exercising it? He has given the power of 
sympathy, are you making it felt ? Some special 
gift of God we can each discern in our lives 
which he has given us as the matter of sacrifice 
and which we can offer hack to him. 

It is the conviction that we are continually as¬ 
sociated with the work of God — that we are 
working for and with him — that carries us over 
the difficulties of work, and through the times of 
discouragement. We shall often find that those 
for whom we work are ungrateful. It is one of 
the things that those who are just beginning re¬ 
ligious work find most disheartening. When once 
we got to work, we expected that our work would 
be accepted with gratitude. But not at all, hu¬ 
man nature reveals its pettiness and its selfish¬ 
ness in its crudest form to the religious worker. 
One discovers that in this case, when one thought 
that one was laying a true foundation for spiritual 
influence one has been regarded all along as a 
source of supplies, that, by a little ingenuity, 
could be made available for an indefinite time. 
In that other case, what was really present was not 
a desire for guidance and instruction, but a hope 
of money or money’s worth. It is easy for the 


168 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


inexperienced worker to fall into a mood of cyni¬ 
cal reaction and disillusionment. Or the diffi¬ 
culty comes from another side. One has spent 
thought, and time, and energy, and withdrawn 
attention from things which one would most 
like to do, one has put oneself to expense and in¬ 
convenience, and then some chance word is mis¬ 
interpreted, some foolish gossip is listened to, and 
the work one was building up is irreparably in¬ 
jured, and all goes for nothing. Our ideals are 
shattered and we ask, what good ? 

It is, on the whole, good to have such experi¬ 
ences— good, as they send us back to our self- 
examination to ask ourselves just what we were 
attempting and expecting. If our work is merely 
a work for men; if our capacity to continue in 
it depends upon the return we shall get from men; 
if consciousness of success and the pleasant glow 
of being appreciated is essential to us; why, then, 
we shall, and may as well, soon throw up the at¬ 
tempt. All that means that one is working for 
a human and earthly reward, just as much as 
though we expected so many dollars a week and 
are disappointed at not being paid. But if the 
love of Jesus and eagerness to serve him is at the 
bottom of our activity, it is quite another matter 
and we shall not bother about the praise of men. 
“ We have taken a standard ” reported the young 



WORK 


169 


officer to his general, with a pleasant anticipa¬ 
tion of the praise he would doubtless receive. 
“ Go and take another,” was the only answer. It 
is human enough, but it is radically wrong to ex¬ 
pect to be praised all the time for doing what os¬ 
tensibly one is doing for the Glory of God. 

It is apt to seem to us, too, that the returns of 
our work are pitifully small. We start in upon 
some active religious work, and after a little we 
begin making up the account. How much has 
actually been accomplished ? One fears that this 
often has its roots in the feeling that we are being 
judged by others on the basis of what we can 
show. Others have a certain standard of effi¬ 
ciency by which they judge us, and we fear to fall 
short of that standard. We may feel that com¬ 
mercialism is being brought into our work, but 
we have not the courage to stand out. I do not 
mean that one should be content with being ob¬ 
viously inefficient, but only that commercial 
standards of numbers and percentages are not any 
true standard for a spiritual work. Yet it is dif¬ 
ficult for a priest, for example, who knows that 
his Bishop is estimating his work by the size of 
his Confirmation class, and that his vestry is es¬ 
timating him for his power as a money getter, 
to disregard deliberately their standard of value 
— to decline to pad his Confirmation class with 


170 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


unprepared material, or to desert his spiritual du¬ 
ties to become a public beggar. It is difficult to 
bold oneself to purely spiritual ideals, in the face 
of an ever-increasing pressure from commercial 
ideals; to tell oneself, and to stick to the fact 
after it is told, that one’s business is purely and 
simply to serve God with all one’s heart and soul 
and strength, and that success in that is the only 
success, that the only test is the loyalty of service. 
Of course, one may, with all honesty and zeal of 
service, have undertaken a work which one can¬ 
not carry on, for which one’s powers do not fit 
one. It may turn out that one was not fitted to 
teach though one honestly thought one was, or 
that the special guild we undertook we could not 
manage. Well, that is a matter for readjust¬ 
ment which, once made, we perhaps find our proper 
work. But even in such cases the test is not a 
commercial one — does it pay ? but the feeling of 
bad adjustment and lack of vocation for the spe¬ 
cial work. 

After all, how is it possible for us to tell what 
is or what is not success? We can only estimate 
apparent result — and that is often times a very 
poor indication. The missionaries, for example, 
go on year in and year out laboring faithfully 
in a heathen city, and nothing seems to happen. 
People at home begin to get restless and com- 


WORE 


171 


plain. “We spend so many dollars in that field 
each year and have for years, and it does not 
pay.” It is difficult to speak in any measured 
terms of such complaints. I remember a certain 
parish in which it was proposed to the vestry 
that they should pay a lay reader in charge of a 
mission three dollars a Sunday instead of two. 
A vestryman objected on the ground that the 
parish was not getting anything from the mis¬ 
sion now. I do not see how you can expect to 
get anything for missions or any other church 
work if such are your ideals. Who knows what 
is the actual spiritual result of a mission station 
in China? Plenty of instances could be cited 
from the mission field where it was only after 
many years of labor that the work began to show 
spiritual results. Who can ever estimate the “ re¬ 
sults ” obtained by a faithful teacher. The seed 
sown may only come to maturity long after the 
teacher is dead. What God looks to us for is serv¬ 
ice, loyal and faithful and self-sacrificing. And 
in such a case there is always this result: that 
you have obeyed God and done your duty. Possi¬ 
bly that was all God wanted — your service and 
not results. Other men have labored and you 
have entered into their labors. Why should not 
others enter into yours ? 

Let us look at one more danger — an opposite 


172 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


one — the danger of externalism. One of the 
embarrassments of religious work is often the 
character of the persons who offer themselves. 
There are certain terribly busy persons who seem 
possessed by a restless devil. They have an over¬ 
flowing physical or nervous vitality which seeks 
to expend itself. They want to work, but they 
want to work for themselves and in their own 
way. They are often very “ successful ” work¬ 
ers, but it is difficult to find any spiritual char¬ 
acter to their work. It seems work for work’s 
sake. Then there are people who have a desire 
to lead, who wish to manipulate other people, who 
have some social ambition or personal end to gain. 
They are embarrassing factors because they 
dispiritualise any work with which they are con¬ 
nected. It is well for us to be pretty clear of 
our motives in undertaking any work. To be 
sure our motives are likely to be terribly mixed, 
we shall not avoid that, but we can be pretty 
certain of ourselves so far as this — that we can 
determine whether we have a real love of souls 
and are seeking God’s glory in the work we un¬ 
dertake. 

The Christian then goes out to the day’s work 
to labor till the evening closes and the night comes, 
understanding that the meaning of the work he 


WORK 


173 


is undertaking is the consecration of his powers 
to God that God may be glorified in him. My 
work may seem utterly away from God, a mere 
material toil for my daily bread; but if in it, 
and through it I am offering myself to God, it 
has thereby gained a Christian character. My 
work may seem purely spiritual, the work of a 
God-given ministry, but if in and through it I am 
seeking my glory, it has lost all relation to religion. 
What gives work its character is the consecration 
of our powers therein. 

Consecration, then, shall be our final word; self- 
immolation upon the Cross of Christ. Conse¬ 
crate yourself wholly unto God that the life of 
the Crucified Jesus may be manifest in your life. 
Be filled with the spirit of consecration and 
the will of consecration and God himself will 
provide the means and opportunity of conse¬ 
cration. Only remember that it is not to¬ 
morrow that we are to consecrate but to-day. 
It is a pressing business. It is not future op¬ 
portunities that will call us but present opportu¬ 
nities that do — opportunities that are calling us 
out of our lives as they are. Do not waste time 
in dreams. The Master is come and calleth me 
— perhaps he has been calling a long time. 

Listen to the words of our Lord: “ I must 


174 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


work the works of Him that sent me, while it 
is yet day; the night cometh, when no man can 
work.” 

The night cometh to you also ; how near it 
may be. 

And when the night comes and men lay down 
their lives and go forth in response to God’s call 
into another part of His Kingdom, this is written: 
“ And their works follow them.” 

What works will follow you ? 


THE EIGHTH MEDITATION 








THE EIGHTH MEDITATION 


PAIN 

Let us listen to the words of our Lord — 

HEN thou wast young, thou girdedst thy¬ 
self, and walkedst whither thou would- 
est: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt 
stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird 
thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” 

Let us 'picture — 

The death of S. Peter. You remember that 
he was crucified with his head downward. This 
is the end of an apostle of our Lord. Since he 
had known our Lord he had served him most 
faithfully. That vigorous, impulsive soul had 
been all eagerness in the service. The labors of 
an Apostle were no light labors. Kecall S. Paul’s 
177 



178 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


catalogue of them: in weariness and painfulness; 
in cold and nakedness; in watchings and fastings. 
That must have been the ordinary lot of an Apos¬ 
tle. And now the end comes here, on a cross, 
derisively. Behold, S. Peter had asked, we have 
left all and followed thee: What shall we have 
therefore? Is this the reward? All that will 
live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecu¬ 
tions. 

Consider, first — 

That the life our blessed Lord lived was a typi¬ 
cal life. In its main features it represents the 
necessary life of a righteous man in an ungodly 
world. Our Lord did not ordain useless suffer¬ 
ings for himself; but being what he was, and the 
world being what it is, suffering was an inevitable 
consequence. He came into a world of which 
poverty, and pain, and lack of sympathy, and sel¬ 
fishness are characteristic. In which men are in¬ 
tent on attaining their own ends, and are ready 
to crush remorselessly whatever opposes, will do 
to death whatever threatens their chances of gain 
or their attained position. Do you recognise this 
remorseless selfishness in yourself ? What is your 
attitude toward what opposes you ? Will you hold 
your own at the expense of another’s suffering? 


PAIN 


179 


Consider, second — 

That we are called in this present life, not to 
enter into the joy of our Lord, but to repeat in 
our own experience his life of suffering. In mea¬ 
sure, if we will follow Christ faithfully, we must 
live over his experience. Under our changed con¬ 
ditions we shall find, as he found, suffering in 
some form a fixed element in life. There are 
many forms of the one fact; but no soul that has 
passed the innocence of childhood enters the gate 
of heaven unmarked with the sign of the cross. 

Let us pray, then — 

That we may have strength to bear willingly 
whatever form of suffering God may call us to. 
Pray for power to accept the Christian vocation: 
“ If any man will come after me, let him deny 
himself and take up his cross and follow me.” 

O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth 
all things both in heaven and earth; we humbly 
beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful 
things, and to give us those things which are 
profitable for us; though Jesus Christ our Lord. 

We live in a world upon which rests ever the 
awful mysterious shadow of pain. Why pain is, 


180 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


no man knoweth. It is not the result of sin be¬ 
cause it was in the world long before sin was. 
The world is so made, the sentient world, that it 
needs must suffer. We see it in the eyes of the 
stricken animal, and ask our questions of its 
meaning. We stand by the bed of the child, pain- 
wracked and agonising, and we cry, Why, O Lord, 
why? and there is no voice nor any that an¬ 
swers; the heavens are dumb. The secret of it is 
hidden in the heart of God. And our sole stay 
under the weight of the problem is there too: we 
trust in the heart of God. If we had but na¬ 
ture to look to, we should despair. But when 
we see God revealed in the Crucified we are able 
to hope and believe, for then we understand that 
God is love. 

It is well to face the facts thus in their extreme 
form, and the further fact that we have no an¬ 
swer, for, in a way, that clears the ground for us. 
We are able then to turn our thoughts from use¬ 
less speculation to the consideration of this; 
Given pain as a constant factor in human experi¬ 
ence, has it any use ? 

And here we are on firm ground. There is no 
manner of doubt of the usefulness of pain — and 
I will use the word in a large sense as including, 
not only suffering, but all the difficulty and hard¬ 
ness of life. 


PAIN 


181 


Pain then — it is on the surface of the mat¬ 
ter— is one of the factors which develop life. 
Our powers are called out through opposition and 
matured through struggle. Sorrow and suffering 
are what most purify and soften character if we 
will let them have their way. If we have been 
observant of life we have noticed how hard, how 
unsympathetic, the young are. Their lives have 
been easy and prosperous and little of suffering 
of any kind has touched them; and they are cold 
and hard as burnished steel. To get the ripe mel¬ 
lowness of a true Christian character God had to 
send them pain. They must come into intimate 
contact with the hard side of life: must see and 
feel suffering. There are lands that are so baked 
hard by the perpetual sunshine that the rain, 
when it falls, does not sink into the earth but 
runs immediately off, leaving the land barren and 
fruitless; but let it once be broken up and it will 
hold the water of heaven and bring forth abun¬ 
dantly. It is so with human life. The sunshine 
of perpetual prosperity hardens it; it becomes 
contented and self-sufficient. If there is discon¬ 
tent, it is the discontent of an unsatisfied appo- 
tite, not the divine discontent of a hungry soul. 
In the soil that sheds the divine grace no spiritual 
habits take root. There we have the phenomena 
of worldliness and indifference. Before such men 


182 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


and women one sets spiritual truth and motive in 
vain. Really, it is not so much disinclination 
as an incapacity to understand, that one is deal¬ 
ing with. They do not know what one means 
by the spiritual life. Talk about grace and the 
supernatural working of sacraments, and you are 
talking in an unintelligible language. Appeals 
to the conscience bound off and leave no mark. 
What then? God has to put into the life the 
plowshare of pain and cut the hard surface with 
sharp furrows. It has to lie prone under the 
harrow of adversity; it has to have the sign of 
the cross cut deep into it. Then the scarred and 
gashed surface will be tender to receive the dew 
of the divine grace; the soul, feeling its helpless¬ 
ness and its need, will lie open to the rain of 
heaven and will respond to God’s action with 
fruitfulness. God will not be kept out of our 
lives; he will break into them by violence if he 
cannot come in through open doors. 

The deeper things of life are the hard and pain¬ 
ful things. You look back in your experience 
and you find that the things that have taught 
you most, the things by which you have most 
profited, have not been pleasant and joyful things. 
Pleasure and joy teach hardly at all; are, unless 
we are very watchful, causes of spiritual stag¬ 
nation and spiritual death. It is a common- 


PAIN 


183 


place of pastoral experience that the newly 
married will show spiritual degeneracy. New 
ties, new duties, leaving less time for spir¬ 
itual things, people charitably say. A new sel¬ 
fishness, rather, in which God and the claims of 
God are forgotten. Times of prosperity are not 
times of liberality; it is another commonplace 
that the church finds it difficult to raise money 
when money is plenty. 

The fact of the matter is, of course, that we 
attribute our success and our pleasure to our¬ 
selves: we forget our dependence on God when 
everything is going on prosperously. We cease 
to feel needs that we cannot satisfy by our own re¬ 
sources, and God fades out of the life which does 
not feel the constant need of him. Whatever of 
religious practice is kept up becomes merely for¬ 
mal. And by contrast we see the use of adver¬ 
sity. Adversity breaks down that self-dependence 
which made us blind to our own needs. It brings 
to us the conviction that immortal beings cannot 
be forever satisfied with mortal things. No 
amount of preaching will bring anything more 
than a languid assent to these things as probably 
true. The discovery of our own incapacity will 
make the truth vivid to us. You know the differ¬ 
ence there is between the languid prayer for God’s 
protection which we ordinarily include in our pe- 


184 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


titions, and the fervent cry of the soul under the 
stress of immediate danger. And, I repeat, it is 
pain in one form or another which makes us con¬ 
scious in this vivid way of most of our needs, and 
sends us to the feet of God. 

Intercession, for example, is a recognised duty 
of the Christian life: we have no disposition to 
deny it. We, perhaps, to some extent, practise 
it. But let the hand of God be laid on one whom 
we love, let us feel the shudder of apprehension 
lest the disease end fatally, lest the soul go forth 
unconverted, and it is quite another matter — our 
intercession. There is born in us a quite new 
sense of the control of God over life, of our need of 
God now. God at once becomes a person to whom 
we can fly and with whom we can plead. 

There is one thing about our Blessed Lord’s 
life which we feel brings him very near to us. If 
we are asked why, in all our troubles, our heart 
goes out to him, why we feel that we can so im¬ 
plicitly trust him, why in the deepest pain and 
sorrow we turn so instinctively to him — knowing 
all the time that pain and sorrow are of his send¬ 
ing — the secret of it is to be found in one word; 
his sympathy. The assumption of humanity by 
the Son of God, his entrance into human experi¬ 
ence, has created the bond between us. It is quite 
useless to tell us that God the Father sympathises 


PAIN 


185 


with us too; we believe that, we accept it as a 
theological truth; but still it does not make the 
same impression. It may be foolish, but we say 
to ourselves, our Lord knows . Foolish or not, we 
have confidence in One who has shared our experi¬ 
ence. We follow the steps of his most holy life 
feeling sure that his experience of human pain 
is making him a safe refuge for us. Well, what 
we feel, perhaps exaggeratedly, that pain has done 
for our Blessed Lord, that, certainly, pain does for 
us: it illumines our hearts. Out of it is born 
that wealth of sympathy which is one of the price¬ 
less possessions of humanity. What would life be 
without it ? The sufferer tosses restless upon his 
bed, and one comes and lays soothing hands upon 
the aching head and the pain becomes, not less, 
but less intolerable. Our heart is breaking with 
its pent up anguish, but if it can pour itself out to 
a heart that can understand how instantaneous 
the relief. The difficulty is lessened as soon as it 
is shared. The poor child gets rid of its heart¬ 
ache upon its mother’s breast. The weary man 
half solves his problem in the act of telling it. 
And what gives us this power to still another’s 
pain, to lighten the burden of the weary soul? 
Just that we have had the like experiences. 'Not 
that we have had the same suffering, but that we 
are also sufferers. Our hearts have ached and 


186 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


our brains have throbbed and we have gone down 
into the deep waters of despair. Sympathy is 
pain-born; it gives us the power to take another’s 
hand and say, I know . So we find infinite con¬ 
solation in the pages of the New Testament be¬ 
cause we find revealed there One whom we feel 
will come and stand by us and take our hand and 
say, I know . 

But all our wonderful power of sympathy may 
be lost, or lessened and wasted. We may make 
ourselves such that the wearied child will, in loneli¬ 
ness, sob itself to silence sooner than turn to us; 
that our hearts will be the refuge of no laden 
souls; that our fellows will repress their grief 
and assume a stoical calm when the door opens to 
let us in. And why? Because we have never 
learned to use our own pain; because suffering has 
come and touched us with its burning hand and left 
us scarred and wounded, but unmelted. We have 
never found our healing at the feet of the Cruci¬ 
fied, never sobbed our wearied hearts to rest on 
the breast of Jesus. It is one of the most terrible 
things in life, an unaccepted suffering; a suffer¬ 
ing that is borne, but borne with a rebellious heart. 
O the horrible bitterness of it! How it sours the 
soul with cynicism and contempt. How it poisons 
the life with bitterness. You have known natures 
which have turned hard and cold; fixed faces, 


PAIN 


187 


worn deep with care-lines, before whose look you 
instinctively close your heart. You feel that there 
is a dead heart underneath all that. What has 
happened ? God has come knocking at that heart, 
and the door was shut. God tried to come into 
that life, and it would not have him. So the life 
goes on, growing harder and harder under the touch 
of God. An old age, hard, hitter, desperate, draws 
on. There is nothing so awful to look on as an. 
unsanctified old age. 

But look at the opposite side of the picture. 
The soul goes out responsive to the call of God. 
Suffering is received as opportunity, as a distinct 
call of God. There is a very evident vocation in 
suffering if we have the eyes to see it. It is not 
just the grinding of a hard law that we cannot es¬ 
cape; it is not just the purposeless infliction of a 
mighty will. Let us try to realise it a little fur¬ 
ther, try to unravel its meanings. I have spoken 
of it as discipline, hut discipline is manifold. 

In the first place there can be no doubt that 
much of pain is punitive. It comes, not as an 
arbitrary infliction, but as the result of our own 
actions. Lawless action cannot be allowed to pass 
as though it were not. Take, for example, some 
of the phenomena of waste. The opportunities of 
life lie open before us in our youth. We seem to 
ourselves to be looking through the wide-stretched 


188 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


gates of some Eden where the fruits and flowers of 
existence are spread out in gleaming beauty. All 
that the heart can desire is there in unstinted pro¬ 
fusion. But our unwise feet carry us first to the 
pleasantest fruits, not the most profitable. Many 
of us wake up after years of purely selfish indul¬ 
gence to find that we have missed the best things. 
The wasted school days have brought the faulty 
education and we are perforce shut out from much 
of the noblest in life. The wantonly squandered 
strength of youth, which seemed so exhaustless, 
has worn out, and we have but our jaded and sensi¬ 
tive nerves as the result. We look forward, and 
we dread to look forward, to the years through 
which we must drag our exhausted body. We 
amused ourselves at the expense of others and we 
have now a critical and harsh judging temper 
which makes us its slaves. How often the confes¬ 
sor hears the question: Why can I not overcome 
this habit, why does this defect so retain its hold ? 
The answer in most cases would be plain enough 
if the penitent would but question his own spir¬ 
itual history. You have worked for years to plant 
and train that habit; can you expect to be rid of it 
in months ? 

Worst of all are the results of spiritual waste. 
Years pass in which God has been neglected, or 
was a mere formula in the life. The needs of 





PAIN 


189 


the soul were resolutely put aside. Instead of that 
regular spiritual development which is the ideal of 
the Christian life there has been progressive de¬ 
generation. The results of this are indifference 
and lukewarmness. These are the direct penalty 
of the sin of the neglect of God. And supposing 
the person to come to himself and desire to return 
to the Father’s house, how difficult the process 
then is. The spiritual nature that has lain so 
long atrophied is revived with infinite labor. The 
taste for divine things which has been so long un¬ 
cultivated is acquired slowly. The life exhibits a 
constant tendency to lapse. Put it alongside of a 
life that has developed normally and you at once 
see the difference. Why is religion so hard, such 
an one moans. Religion is hard because sin has 
made it so; the punishment has at last found the 
sinner out. 

And then there is a pain that is corrective, the 
object of which would seem to be to keep us sensi¬ 
tive to God. The pain of a wounded conscience is 
mostly of this nature: it warns us that something 
is the matter. It is like the physical pain of dis¬ 
ease — it calls our attention to the fact of our con¬ 
dition. It insists that, if we sin, it shall at least 
be with open eyes. If the conscience has been well 
developed any tentative steps toward sin are at 
once pointed out. Except in the case where one is 


190 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


swept away before unexpected and overwhelming 
temptation, sin is apt to creep upon us by almost 
insensible gradations. It begins by our yielding 
in points that seem absolutely innocent, but which 
involve an abandonment of an ideal, the lowering 
of the standard. One of the commonest forms will 
be a conformity to a social custom that is morally 
debilitating: then will come warnings of conscience 
that are intended to check this ere it be too late. 
Or there is the temptation to place ourselves in 
situations which, while not actually sinful, are next 
to sin; it is a species of rash action that is all too 
common. Then, when we think ourselves strong, 
we find ourselves weak. We have indulged a com¬ 
panionship that we know to be dangerous; we have 
let ourselves drift into an intimacy which is de¬ 
moralising ; we have been walking on the edge of a 
moral precipice, and here we are slipping over and 
clinging to the edge, or lying crushed and broken 
at the bottom. Well, the pain that we endure is 
not merely punishment; it is, in God’s providence, 
a warning to us to extricate ourselves ere it be too 
late. Or the pain comes in this form: we experi¬ 
ence a progressive disinclination to spiritual exer¬ 
cise; we feel that we are losing grip on our re¬ 
ligious life; it is pain and perplexity to us. But 
that, too, is a warning, a warning that we need the 
spiritual physician; that we need to review life and 


PAIN 


191 


throw ourselves with fresh zest and enthusiasm 
into religious activity. Or it may be that we find 
our way beset with difficulty; we are hindered by 
obstacles; we are harassed by obstructive circum¬ 
stances: it is a sign that we need to have our 
strength called out, it is a corrective of spiritual 
languor and inertia. 

And then there is a third office of pain — the 
purgatorial; it cleanses and braces the character 
if we know how to use it. The “ Furnace of Af¬ 
fliction ” is a frequent Biblical metaphor. Noth¬ 
ing deepens the spiritual character as do the suffer¬ 
ings of life; we feel instinctively the difference 
between the character that has had no experience 
of suffering and that which has passed through 
the “ furnace.” The Greek conception of Apollo 
the radiant Sun-god, embodying the perfection of 
human beauty and joy, we feel could do nothing 
for us. Between such a conception of perfection 
and our world-wearied lives, there is no bond. 
The heart knowing its own bitterness, the soul 
laden with sorrow, finds no attraction there. The 
soul turns away to one like itself weary and heavy- 
laden, to a man of sorrows laden with grief. The 
great of the world are those who have borne the 
world’s burdens and suffered its pains. Not 
through happiness and gaiety have men and women 
risen high in the kingdom of God; the saints have 


192 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


been formed amid toil and tribulation. As you 
watch their lives you find most likely at the begin¬ 
ning men and women of many imperfections, of 
wayward passions. But as they 'go on you realise 
that the character is being deepened and purified, 
that it is developing features of spiritual beauty. 
All the dross is being purged away and the gleam 
of the gold shines out. And what is doing it? 
Pain, in one form or another; patient endurance 
of suffering in some form. They are not as those 
who float down the stream in gaily decked barges, 
but they toil slowly upward, and their thought is 
ever, not of the world that they lose, but of the 
city that they shall gain. Through the mists of 
earth that hang heavy about them and chill them, 
and hide their way; through the sunshine of life 
which glows so gloriously about them, seeking to 
attract and fascinate them,— through all, they 
catch the gleam of the gates of the city and hear 
the echo of the heavenly anthems that float about 
the throne of God and of the Lamb. It is their 
endurance here that has so purged their sight that 
through pain-clouds and tear-mists their eyes ever 
brighten as the eyes of those who see Him who is 
invisible. 

And we are so faint-hearted through it all, and 
so doubtful and fear-smitten and passionately re¬ 
sisting. We shake off God’s hand and will not 


PAIN 


193 


have it so. It is hard bitter treatment that we 
have little deserved. What have we done? Ah, 
what have we not done ? 

“How hast thou merited — 

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot. 

Alack, thou knowest not 

How little worthy any love thou art! 

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee 

Save me, save only me? 

All which I took from thee I did but take, 

Not for thy harms, 

But just that thou might seek it in my arms. 

All which thy child’s mistake 

Fancies as lost, I have stored up for thee at home: 

Rise, clasp my hand, and come. 

Halts by me that footfall: 

Is my gloom after all. 

Shade of his hand, outstretched caressingly? 

Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, 

I am he whom thou seekest! 

Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me .’ n 

Let us go a stage higher; let us climb to that 
mountain peak where suffering ceases to be touched 
by irritation and rebellion and is embraced as mat¬ 
ter of sacrifice. There is a saying of S. Paul that 
throws us into the very heart of suffering. “ I 
fill up that which is lacking in the sufferings of 
Christ.” That saying seems to me to illumine the 


194 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


whole scene of this pain-stricken world. Back of 
all experience and all thought there is some in¬ 
herent necessity for suffering that we cannot 
fathom. It brought on the sufferings of our 
Blessed Lord. “ It was fitting,” the Apostle says, 
“ that the Captain of our salvation should be made 
perfect through suffering.” By being taken up 
into his body we pass to participation in this sac¬ 
rificial suffering of the Christ. He still suffers 
in his body here on earth. “ Saul, Saul, why 
persecutest thou me ? ” All suffering willingly en¬ 
dured for his sake passes into union with his sacri¬ 
fice. It joins us to his sacrificial action. The 
sorrows and pains of life are things given to the 
Christian that he may have somewhat to offer. 
They are the way of union with the cross. They 
are not punishment or displeasure, but love — 
the same love that upraised a cross on Calvary. 

It is none the less hard ? Ho, surely not. The 
cross was never easy, though it was the salvation of 
the world. But once having seen suffering as sac¬ 
rifice, we are not going to struggle to escape it. We 
are not going to barter our cross for all the joy of 
the world. For we have seen once and for all that 
the service of the cross is the supreme thing in life, 
because it is to us, as it was to Christ, the mark 
of acceptance and love. And “ to serve God and 
to love him is higher and better than happiness, 


PAIN 


195 


though it be with pierced hands and wounded 
brows and hearts laden with sorrow.” 

“But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross, 

Thou wilt not find it in this world again. 

Nor in another; here, and here alone 
Is given thee to suffer for God’s sake. 

In other worlds we shall more perfectly 
Serve him and love him, praise him, work for him, 
Grow near and nearer to him with all delight. 

But there we shall not any more be called 
To suffer, which is our appointment here. 

So if himself he come to thee, and stand 
Beside thee, gazing down on thee with eyes 
That smile, and suffer; that will smite thy heart 
With their own pity, to a passionate peace; 

And reach to thee himself the Holy Cup, 

(With all its wreathen stems of passion-flowers 
And quivering sparkles of the ruby stars), 

Pallid and Royal, saying, Drink with me; 

Wilt thou refuse? Nay, not for Paradise! 

The pale brow will compel thee, the pure hands 
Will minister unto thee; thou shalt take 
Of that Communion through the solemn depths 
Of the dark waters of thine agony. 

With heart that praises him, that yearns to him 
The closer through that hour. Hold fast his hand, 
Though the nails pierce thine, too! Take only care 
Lest one drop of the Sacramental wine 
Be spilled, of that which ever shall unite 
Thee, soul and body, to thy living Lord! 





196 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


Therefore gird up thyself, and come, to stand 
Unflinching under the unfaltering hand, 

That waits to prove thee to the uttermost. 

It were not hard to suffer by his hand, 

If thou couldst see his face;—But in the dark! 
That is the one last trial;—be it so. 

Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too: 

How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else? 

Thou wilt not see the face, nor feel the hand. 

Only the cruel crushing of the feet. 

When through the bitter night the Lord comes down 
To tread the wine-press.— Not by sight, but faith. 
Endure, endure,— be faithful to the end!” 


THE NINTH MEDITATION 




THE NINTH MEDITATION 

DISCIPLINE 



Listen to the words of St . Paul — 

HEY do it to obtain a corruptible crown, 
but we an incorruptible.” 

Let us try to picture — 

An athletic contest. These men have not come 
carelessly into the field from their duties of life. 
They stand here at the end of a long preparation. 
Every muscle has been carefully exercised. 
Through months they have been looking forward 
to this hour, and to try their strength against 
others they have been willing to endure hardship 
and self-denial. The ordinary pleasures of life 
have been put aside. They have lived on plain 
fare. And now, when the hoped for day has come, 


200 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


they have only a chance of victory. And after all, 
the end, if gained, is a perishing thing: “ They 

do it to obtain a corruptible crown.” 

Consider, first — 

That the end of a Christian life is an incor¬ 
ruptible crown and the reward of all true striving 
is certain. It is not, that run as we will, we may 
still miss the prize, but all win who run well. We 
are placed in this world to go through this contest. 
We are surrounded, not by shouting crowds of our 
fellows, but those who watch us are looking out 
of the unseen — we are surrounded by a “ Cloud 
of witnesses”—the angels, the saints, Jesus. 
How should we not run well ? 

Consider, second — 

The feebleness with which you have heretofore 
run this race. What has been the laxity of your 
life; your feebleness in devotion; the ease with 
which you have been diverted from spiritual 
things; the lack of zeal in work; the preoccupation 
of pleasure; the indifference to ideals. You saun¬ 
ter across the course, looking at the spectators, ad¬ 
miring the scenery. Would anyone suspect that 
you were contending against the fiercest of ad¬ 
versaries— the world, the flesh, the devil — con¬ 
tending for an incorruptible crown ? Does not the 


DISCIPLINE 


201 


supposition sound like mockery, sarcasm? What 
is the amount of your interest in this contest ? Is 
it comparable to your interest in the next reception, 
the latest fashions? You . . . contending! 

Let us / pray then — 

That God may give us some appreciation of the 
relative importance of things. Pray that He will 
fill you with the spirit of discipline. 

It is pleasant to go out into the forest, and sit 
where the light filters down through the fretwork 
of branches and leaves, and weaves fast-shifting 
patterns over the mossy ground. What calm joy 
there is in the sight of the untamed greenery work¬ 
ing its will; the tangle of hazel thickets, the climb¬ 
ing grape-vines, the matted and impenetrable 
growths of blackberry. Nature, we think, un¬ 
touched, uncontrolled, is surpassingly beautiful. 
No doubt, beautiful; but also wasteful. Really 
what is going on here is a struggle for existence. 
These trees and vines, these bushes and brambles, 
are fighting for their very lives. Here you shall 
see some bent and shrivelled sapling, its life being 
crushed out in the tremendous struggle; there a 
tree stands dying in the grasp of a luxuriant para¬ 
site ; there, again, a pale flower clings to a waning 
life. There is not energy enough in earth to sup- 


202 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


port all that strives to live upon it. Some must 
give way. It will be the problem of civilisation, 
once understood, to control this energy; to direct 
it to beneficence; to preserve the useful and de- 
stroy the useless. As it is now, one growth checks 
and hinders another and the highest result is lost. 

It is so in human life. Life — any life — as 
it starts, is full of possibilities and potencies. The 
total amount of energy there is enormous. And 
the question of the future, as between usefulness 
and waste, is a problem of direction, of control. 
Of possible lines of development, certain have to be 
chosen and others rejected. Of the various pow¬ 
ers there are some that we want as the highest per¬ 
fection, there are others that we do not want at 
all. Of the multitudinous habits that we might 
form, some will be useful to us, others not. And 
always the growth of some will mean the death of 
others; no more in life than in the forest can 
every growth that starts, survive; some will perish 
in the struggle. And shall this be left to what we 
call chance, or shall there preside over our lives a 
wise spirit of choice and direction? 

All of us have gone on some way in this process. 
There have been deaths and survivals in our lives. 
There are growths which are deep rooted and lux¬ 
uriant ; there are pale and anaemic growths. Con¬ 
sciously or unconsciously we have been exercising 


DISCIPLINE 


203 


choice all our lives and there is to-day in us what 
we have chosen shall be there. There is really no 
chance about it, what we call chance is the result 
of unnoticed choice. 

We look back, it may be, and bewail the fact 
that the path has led us hitherward. We see now 
where we have diverged from the path of spiritual 
progress, and we know that to return means loss 
of time, and the destruction of what we have ac¬ 
quired by years of labor. But the thing to fix 
our eyes upon is that we are what we are as the 
result of choice by the action of free will. We 
are to-day what we have thought it worth while 
to be. 

But fortunately this action of free will upon 
life, this process of control which we call discipline, 
is always possible. It is true that we shall be 
to-morrow what we will to be. Essentially, we 
are always what we will . Of course, not in the 
sense of full accomplishment, but in the sense of 
determinate effort and aim which is pregnant of 
future success. One of the things most notable 
about Christianity is its hopefulness, it despairs of 
no man till the grave closes over him. It never 
despairs, because its ultimate reliance is upon the 
grace of God. Let it be that one’s life has been 
largely waste; that one awakes to the consciousness 
of spiritual possibilities and finds oneself handi- 


204 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


capped with a disastrous past. Still, the future 
is not mere gloomy reaping of foregone results, but 
is bright with the glory of coming accomplishment. 
For again, the whole life is in the willing; and a 
converted will means ultimately a changed life. 
Other religions have despaired of men who had 
made failures, have thrust them out as the dirt 
and refuse of society; Christianity comes to all 
with words of hope. u Let him that stole, steal no 
more.” “ Be not conformed to this world, but 
transformed.” What, once more, it looks to is the 
willing. But the willing and the results of it 
mean hard work. Christianity is no holiday pa¬ 
rade; no waving of flags over sun-lighted fields. 
Christianity means warfare; means, first and last 
and always, discipline. 

There is no such thing as a strong life which is 
an undisciplined life. There are lives which ex¬ 
hibit strong growths or passions, but are not at 
all strong lives because they lack balance; the 
growth or passion is inordinate, and hinders other 
developments. A Christian life displays a well- 
rounded and balanced growth. Its aim is the per¬ 
fect development of all desirable elements of char¬ 
acter. “ Be ye therefore perfect, as your Father 
in Heaven is perfect.” It is not the perfection of 
God, which is infinite and unapproachable, but a 
perfection which is like God’s in that it is well- 


DISCIPLINE 


205 


rounded and symmetrical. We are constantly 
running across types of life which lay claim to a 
high, degree of perfection, which, when examined, 
are sure to be merely one-sided developments. 
There is a type of good man to-day, which is ex¬ 
alted in opposition to Christians; a man who has a 
high conception of honorable and pure conduct in 
business and social relations; he is a good hus¬ 
band and father, charitable and kindly. Here, 
people say, is a man better than your religious 
people. He proves the needlessness of religion 
and the church. Possibly, if this world is all the 
world there is; but when you look at him carefully, 
he is of this world merely. A very finished prod¬ 
uct, no doubt, so far as the process goes; but the 
weak point is that there is no spiritual side to the 
character. Attention has been concentrated on the 
production of a few qualities which have reference 
to merely social duties. Whatever has reference 
to God is atrophied and dead. 

Just what then do we mean by a disciplined 
life ? Well, pretty much what you mean by a dis¬ 
ciplined or cultivated field. It means a life that 
is ordered by foresight and not by chance; a life 
that is governed by principle and not by whim. 
We watch children with amusement, it may be, 
struck with the lack of continuity and the degree 
in which they are the sport of mere impulse; tak- 


206 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


ing up or laying down their occupations or games, 
as the present emotion suggests. We can go on 
all our lives that way, if we will. We may take up 
a line of study or a kind of church work, and pur¬ 
sue it till the surface interest fades, and then 
throw it down for something else. We realise to¬ 
day that there is a weak place in our character 
and determine to set ourselves to strengthen it; 
hut before we have accomplished anything, some 
faulty habit makes its existence obtrusive and we 
turn aside to deal with that. To-day we are going 
to be more regular and careful about our self- 
examination; to-morrow it is sins of the tongue 
which seem in urgent need of attention; the next 
day our deficiencies in prayer absorb us. It is 
the child’s lack of continuity and persistence; and 
nothing is ever really accomplished. In the course 
of the year we give some passing attention to all 
our faults, but we give no persistent attention to 
any one, and at the end of the year we are sur¬ 
prised to find that we are where we were at the 
beginning. 

How the first requisite to the improvement of the 
character is wise foresight, the deliberate judgment 
of the life and the determination of what needs to 
be done. That means also the determination of 
what needs doing first, of what is most feasible 
and wisest to undertake first. One of the most 


DISCIPLINE 


207 


common obstacles to spiritual success is the tend¬ 
ency to attempt too much at once. The secret of 
success is concentration. One thing at a time is a 
very good rule. But it is well to attack a 
strategic point; the up-rooting of a sin which is 
far-reaching in its influence, the acquisition of a 
virtue which is like to control development. A 
wise general judges his ground and makes his dis¬ 
positions accordingly. Know at the very outset 
what you want to do. You are not merely attack¬ 
ing an enemy, but attacking an enemy entrenched 
in strong position. It is not worth while frittering 
away attention on an outpost of Satan such as 
wandering thoughts, if your judgment is habitually 
uncharitable, or your words habitually insincere. 
There is little use in attacking a special manifesta¬ 
tion of a sin, like fondness for praise, or conceit, 
when the root-sin itself — pride — is neglected. 
It will, of course, be found that the destruction of 
the root-sin will mean the death of all its progeny. 

The next requisite is perseverance. We are so 
apt to be discouraged with our progress. We ex¬ 
pect to succeed at once. Ko result comes at once 
in the spiritual life. People fail to appreciate 
the slowness with which spiritual habits are 
formed, and the ease with which ground which has 
been apparently gained, is lost. The frequent 
fall is an essential part of discipline; it is the 


208 


THE CHRISTIAN'S DAY 


necessary testing of apparent growth in strength 
to demonstrate its reality — or the reverse. Sin 
and failure have at least this of value, that they 
provide us with the necessary knowledge of our 
true state. For if we are easily cast down by fail¬ 
ure, we are optimists in regard to our acquire¬ 
ments and progress before they have been tried. 
The successful overcoming of temptation for a 
short period almost always gives us the conceit that 
we have won our battle and may relax our guard. 
And then a little wholesome experience of the lit¬ 
tle we have really gained, throws us into as rea¬ 
sonless despair. We need to learn to be content 
with small gains made slowly and with effort, glad 
that we have improved at all. A crisis comes 
usually when having really made considerable 
progress, we come to a stand-still. The most ob¬ 
vious faults have been corrected. Certain habits 
of religion have been acquired. There seems little 
more that is feasible; it is time to rest. It is 
really a time of testing. What we have done so 
far has been rather in the nature of surface work. 
It is comparatively easy, if we have any degree of 
earnestness, to clear the ground and put the sui^ 
face of the life in order; to get rid of obvious sins, 
and to acquire regular habits. But after that has 
been done we enter a new region. What we have 
to deal with now is not so much conduct as motive. 


DISCIPLINE 


209 


The discipline of word and act is comparatively 
easy; the discipline of thought and intention is 
what requires hard work. And yet we cannot 
boast of much success till this inner discipline 
has been in some measure exercised upon us; till 
we have acquired that habit of watchfulness which 
enables us to see the sin in the germ, so to say, and 
kill it there. The suggestive thought, the inor¬ 
dinate desire, the unruly impulse, these are the 
things to attract attention and to be carefully held 
in check. And in regard to such things there is 
no time for rest; in the inner struggle there is no 
finality. Life — not a few years of life — is 
given us as the time of struggle; and till the 
breath leaves the body there is no certainty that 
we may not yet be overcome. There is certainty 
that we shall be, if we relax our watchfulness. 

We shall probably find that in practical dealing 
with ourselves we need, as I have already indi¬ 
cated, to concentrate attention. We shall need in 
a way to dissect the character, and deal with one 
thing at a time. Thus shall we slowly arrive at 
an adequate discipline of self. 

And when we get to close quarters with our 
problem, we shall probably realise, what we have 
not realised before, how helpful, how almost in¬ 
dispensable, a rule of life is. Ultimately a dis¬ 
ciplined life will mean a life subject to rule. But 


210 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


when a rule of life is proposed, there is protest at 
once. You priests think people have nothing to 
do but say their prayers and go to church! I as¬ 
sure you, no. My experience of the amount of 
prayers people say, and the number of times they 
go to church, has not led me to any such conclu¬ 
sions. It is just the opposite, that life is so 
crowded, that I feel the necessity of rule. Rule 
raises in people’s minds a vision of a lot of 
fussy observances, such as you find recommended 
in books of devotion of a certain type. Now be¬ 
cause you cannot always remember the last thing 
before you go to sleep that you may die before 
morning, or because you do not find it practical to 
say texts while you are doing your hair, it does 
not at all follow that a rule of life is impractical. 
By a rule of life, I mean a certain orderliness and 
control which shall assure that the ordinary duties 
of a Christian life are attended to, and that all the 
elements of it have their proper share of atten¬ 
tion. A rule is not good in proportion to its 
elaborateness, but in proportion to its workable¬ 
ness. The reason why people find rules imprac¬ 
tical is because they take a rule and try to force 
the life into it, instead of adapting a rule with 
special reference to the circumstances of life. A 
rule which is good and workable for one person, 
may not be for another, even though the circum- 


DISCIPLINE 


211 


stances of life may be much the same. For that 
reason, then, there is no good of my suggesting a 
rule which might not fit anyone, and by which 
someone, trying to keep it and finding it imprac¬ 
tical, would be convinced of the uselessness of rules 
altogether. 

I may, however, without attempting to draw 
up a rule, suggest some of the things which a rule 
aims to accomplish. 

In the first place, of course, it deals with prayer. 
It tries to effect that there shall be a fixed mini¬ 
mum of prayer in the life. So far as may be it 
allots time for prayer, but it aims rather at get¬ 
ting the special amount of prayer, than the special 
time. Special time is valuable, as tending to 
steady the life; but do not put so much stress on 
time, that if the special time is broken into it does 
not seem worth while to say the prayers at all. 
Intercessions which we intended to say in the morn¬ 
ing should by all means be said then, rather than 
adjourned unnecessarily. Other things should be 
adjourned to them if possible. But if they have 
to be given up then, the afternoon or evening are 
good times too. What reasonably should be done 
on Thursday, can be done on Friday. Only I 
think it is of obligation, if we are going to prosper 
religiously, that each week find time for interces¬ 
sion. Sundays generally afford special opportuni- 


212 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


ties. Instead of being ten minutes late for service, 
suppose you were to be ten minutes early; or if 
not that, suppose you stay ten minutes after; and 
then, if you can so far conquer the Anglican 
mauvaise honte at being seen on your knees for 
any length of time when there is no obvious reason 
for it, and so far control your mind as not to won¬ 
der what Mrs. Jones is thinking about you, you 
will find that you can manage your weekly inter¬ 
cession pretty well. Or if you are fortunate 
enough to be in a parish where a late Celebration 
is the rule, the intervals of the service afford a 
good deal of time for intercession. It is largely 
a matter of knowing how to use time. I have 
known really very pious ladies who had not the re¬ 
motest conception of doing anything during a 
service which is not set down in the Prayer Book. 
Who were annoyed by the ablutions after the Cele¬ 
bration, and were astonished by a suggestion that 
they afforded a very good opportunity to make 
one’s thanksgiving. Beally, when people tell me 
that they have no time for intercession, I am in¬ 
clined to think that what is wanting is not time, 
or inclination, but a little common sense, and the 
ability to act a little differently from other people. 
We are all like sheep, in more senses than one. 

And then there is that other necessary element 
of a regulated life,— self-denial. Self-denial may 


DISCIPLINE 


213 


take a good many forms,— what special form we 
shall require, our own circumstances must deter¬ 
mine. But certainly no life can be spiritually 
healthy into which it does not enter as a pretty 
large element. It may be on the social side of 
life that we need it. Pleasure, or even what we 
choose to consider social duty, may be absorbing 
us altogether too much. It goes without saying 
that we do not think so. We have our place in 
society to fill, etc. But it is easy to make a fairly 
workable test. What is the relative amount of 
time spent socially and in the service of God? 
Broadly speaking, are we subordinating God to 
self — because society is self? Self is omnipres¬ 
ent and intrusive, and it is quite an easy matter 
for it to put on the mask of pressing duty. It is 
a matter of relative values here; one of the places 
in life where nice judgment is required. Where a 
marked distinction between right and wrong stares 
us in the face we have little difficulty of deciding, 
whatever difficulty we may have in acting. But 
here, as so often in matters disciplinary, it is a 
matter of proportion and of emphasis. A little 
thing sways the balance to one side or the other; it 
seems of no great moment, and yet the final issues 
are tremendous — all the difference between a 
worldly and a consecrated life, it may be. We 
may take this to guide us in any case — it is axio- 


214 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


matic — that the service of God is first or no¬ 
where. A service which consists mainly in giving 
Him what we have no special use for, which throws 
Him money we do not care about, and time that 
we do not care to use otherwise; which, if one may 
venture to say so, treats God as a dog to be fed 
with the scraps which fall from our table; that, in 
plain language, is what a religion without self- 
denial means. It is unnecessary to point out its 
inadequacy to any spiritual ends. 

Self-denial certainly means the limitation of self 
in some way. It is a power of suffering. It 
means the sacrifice to God, not of what we do not 
want, but of what we do. It means that in giving, 
we are giving up. It means that in work we are 
doing what it is inconvenient to do. That we are 
giving time that we would fain spend otherwise. 
That we are ruled in our actions by a severe con¬ 
ception of duty. What sort of an abortive per¬ 
formance is a convenient religion ? You will serve 
God when it is convenient to do so! You will 
spend your energies so far as suits your con¬ 
venience! Religion shall be fitted into your life 
as a by-play. Your support of it shall be regu¬ 
lated in the same way that you regulate a purchase 
of opera tickets or a subscription to a club. 

As I have pointed out, discipline must extend 


DISCIPLINE 


215 


over the whole nature. There is no use in inter¬ 
mittent or partial discipline, by which I do not 
mean imperfect discipline; discipline which is 
going on, though it has not yet accomplished its 
results. There is small use in the laborious culti¬ 
vation of little patches of garden amid vast 
stretches of weeds. They will speedily be over¬ 
run. And yet one constantly feels that people im¬ 
agine that they can purchase indulgence in certain 
directions by strictness in others; that a virtue 
may be made to offset a sin. Strict adherence to 
social morality is no excuse for neglect of worship. 
Not is sedulous attendance upon worship an off¬ 
set to worldliness. Religious observances are ri¬ 
diculous and disgusting in a person who makes no 
attempt to control temper, or to be charitable in 
judgment, or who trifles with the truth. 

The whole field of the passional nature needs to 
feel the bridle of careful training. Christians, 
just by virtue of their professed principles, are 
bound to be much more careful than other people. 
The tongue, e. g., as S. James pointed out, is an 
unruly evil. The temper is constantly leading to 
offence. The sensual appetites are constantly re¬ 
asserting themselves and demanding gratification. 
Pride is a sin which holds sway in many a life un¬ 
recognised. It is one of the subtlest of sins, capa- 


216 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


ble of infinite transformation. With such fields of 
activity calling us to work, how can we dream of 
rest? 

And then there is all the other side of the mat¬ 
ter ; that discipline means not only repression, but 
development. We are not aiming at emptiness, 
but completeness. The real work of discipline 
comes when we begin the positive work of trying 
to build up spiritual character. We have to re¬ 
member that we live under the Gospel, not under 
the law. The ten commandments are not sufficient 
ideal of a moral life. They are the ethics of an 
undeveloped people, and while they do contain the 
germ of all ethics, they need to have that germ de¬ 
veloped and stated positively. The Christian law 
of conduct is found in the Sermon on the Mount. 
The Beatitudes embody the ideal life. 

But one may give a literal adherence to the Ten 
Commandments, and be very far from the acquire¬ 
ment of the virtues of the Beatitudes. So our 
discipline, if it is to aim at completeness, must be 
directed to the development of spiritual character. 
Such discipline will be found to lie in the direction 
of spiritual activities; in searching prepara¬ 
tion for the sacraments, and frequent and devout 
reception of them; and in the exercise of the im¬ 
mature spiritual powers. For example, such a vir¬ 
tue as loving-kindness is not attained by keeping 


DISCIPLINE 


217 


one’s temper; nor is it attained by talking plati¬ 
tudes about the Fatherhood of God and the broth¬ 
erhood of man. It is to be gained by the exer¬ 
cise of the sympathetic powers in kindly and help¬ 
ful intercourse with our fellows. Purity is not 
the being without sensual sin; purity is the love of 
pure things,— is the pure hands and the clean 
heart which of all the virtues, makes us most God¬ 
like ; brings most into sympathy with God. 
Really what we want to develop is that soul-hunger 
which is characteristic of the saints. “ Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
for they shall be filled.” 

I think one could almost put it in this way: 
That discipline is the power of selection by which 
we learn to choose out of life those things which 
are best and noblest, and to reject the things which 
are inferior, whether they be right in themselves or 
no. We have to learn, out of the multitudinous 
possibilities of life, to gather those, and just those, 
that will be permanent — permanent, because they 
have relation to God. All things are possible for 
me, but all things are not expedient, and it is a 
very crude judgment that classifies all things as 
either right or wrong, and therefore allowable or 
not. There is a higher point of view. The point 
of view from which all things are envisaged as 
they will or will not promote our spiritual growth. 


218 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


Many things which are in themselves allowable, 
will be rejected by one striving after sanctity, be¬ 
cause they do not promote the main aim of life, 
and take up energy which can be better employed. 
I have no time, the great scientist said, to make 
money. Not because the making of money is evil, 
but because it is not the eternal thing. The time 
required to make it could be so much better em¬ 
ployed. So the Christian must feel that there are 
so many things for which he has no time. His 
energies are all too small to work out the great 
work of his sanctification. That is the supreme 
thing. We look out on the landscape, sun- 
kissed and glorious, in the flashing beauty of the 
early morning. But if we catch sight of a form 
we love, the beauty of the morning is forgotten; 
we have no eyes for lesser things as we look upon 
the joy of our hearts; so the Christian sees much 
that is infinitely attractive in the world about him, 
but the radiance of this world is dimmed by the 
vision of the King in His beauty, and lost in the 
radiance of the coming Christ. 


THE TENTH MEDITATION 















THE TENTH MEDITATION 

THE SUPERNATURAL 


Listen to the word of God — 



HE mountain was full of horses and chari¬ 
ots of fire round about Elisha.” 


Let us picture — 

The prophet and his servant girt about with 
enemies. To the servant no means of escape ap¬ 
pears. He is overwhelmed with fear at the peril. 
In the midst of the peril the prophet is unmoved; 
he is undisturbed because he sees not the power of 
man, but the power of God. If God be on his 
side what can man do unto him. He knows that, 
invisible to the human eye, there are at hand all 
the powers of the heavenly world. The eye of 


222 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


faith sees them — the invisible hosts of God. He 
prays that the trembling servant may see them too. 
And God opens his eyes, and lo! the mountain is 
full of horses of fire and chariots of fire round 
about them. 

Consider, -first — 

This is not exceptional, but usual. The Lord 
standeth round about His people. There are in¬ 
visible guarding presences of the Spiritual order 
about us even now; never are we alone. The 
guarding, controlling, guiding ministers of God, 
are by our side. They are sent out by Him to 
minister to the heirs of Salvation. Why fear? 
Do you doubt God’s power? Or do you doubt 
God’s revelation — that there are powers which 
are to you invisible? If you believe, why fear? 
There are horses and chariots of fire around us 
even now. 

Consider, second — 

How often you have had personal experiences 
of the care of God. You can remember — can you 
not — times in your lives when it seemed as 
though the veil had become very thin and you 
could almost see through it ? If you could not see 
the horses and chariots, you were very certain that 
they were there. You have been in some Dothan, 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


223 


surrounded by your enemies, with the cares, the 
anxieties, the troubles of life, and you became dis¬ 
couraged and saw no way of escape; and then you 
said your prayers, you made your communion, and 
your eyes were opened and you saw the chariots 
of God. Then you understood that what was 
wrong was not that the Syrians were strong, but 
that you were blind. What you needed was not a 
changed world, but a deeper faith, and in the power 
of that faith you went out to meet your enemies, 
now helpless. 

Pray then that your eyes may be opened — 

That you may have that clear eye of faith which 
holds fast to the revealed facts of God’s working. 
O God, open thou our eyes. 

We always find it difficult to get ourselves dis¬ 
entangled from the type of thought prevalent in 
our time. The thought of any time proceeds upon 
certain premises which it takes for granted, and 
any questioning of which is regarded as, at least, 
eccentric. A species of moral pressure is brought 
to bear upon one to accept them. They are not 
matter of argument, but of assumption. A ra¬ 
tionalistic writer has explained to us that the real 
reason of disbelief in miracles is not so much a 
dissatisfaction with the evidences for their occur- 



224 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


rence, as that belief in any supernatural interfer¬ 
ence in the world is utterly alien to the intellectual 
attitude of the time. Men waive aside stories 
about miracles in the same way that they waive 
aside stories about fairies or ghosts. They are not 
matter for serious investigation. We live in a 
time of deadly materialism. The atmosphere of 
it wraps us round. From its earliest childhood 
the boy or girl has ideals of a purely material suc¬ 
cess held up. The aim of life is to get money, or 
to get pleasure. The child of tender years is en¬ 
couraged to undertake some scheme whereby a few 
pennies may be earned, and is highly praised for 
success. Its business ability is being developed, 
forsooth, because it has gained a few dirty pennies. 
People’s dreams of their children’s future are 
easily translatable into dollars and cents. It is 
surely a misfortune if the life turn otherwhere. 
We imagine the shock with which the average 
father and mother learns that the boy wishes to 
enter the priesthood; the daughter thinks of the 
religious order. It is right that in the interests 
of material success, son or daughter should go to 
China or Australia, with faint prospect of return¬ 
ing for years, at any rate; that is sad, no doubt; 
but it is borne with stoical firmness in the interest 
of the child’s future. What future? Here and 
now. But what about the broader future% Is 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


225 


this world all that has claims ? Why the shudder 
when you think of the child in China, not mak¬ 
ing money, but representing Jesus Christ! I 
fancy that there would be no cry over the decline 
in number of candidates for orders; no laments of 
sisterhoods over works offered that they cannot 
take; no sorrowful turning away from opportuni¬ 
ties in the mission field, if children were offered 
to God, instead of to Mammon; if they were per¬ 
petually held out by willing hands to the Living 
Christ, for Him to take and use as seemed good. 

What is the matter ? We are materialists . We 
believe in this world, and love it with all our 
heart and soul and mind and strength. We are 
idolaters of the visible and tangible. Our trust is 
in the senses. God, and all God implies, is a 
theory to us, not the supreme object of our being. 
We move through the world stolidly, without the 
ever present sense of its mysteries, without the 
haunting consciousness of its evanescence; of the 
reality of the unseen things, of the elsewhere and 
the beyond. And yet the world is vibrant with 
the presence of God; of God revealing himself in 
the beauty of the creation. Christianity is some¬ 
times accused of having adopted features of pagan¬ 
ism; at any rate the pagan view of the world is 
infinitely preferable to the material with which we 
are being crushed to-day. It at least saw God 


22a 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


everywhere, if it saw Him crudely and imper¬ 
fectly. It were better surely to see in the saffron 
clouds which go before the sunrise, the flocks of 
the heavenly shepherd going forth to their pasture, 
or to hear the voices of nymphs in the whisper of 
forest leaves, than to see nothing but the phe¬ 
nomena of matter. To the pagan these things 
were the glorious garments of an ever-present di¬ 
vinity ; and whom they ignorantly worshipped, the 
Christ has declared unto us. 

Oh! to get rid of the tyranny of the senses; of 
our implicit assumption that what they reveal to 
us is all there is! Really the senses are limita¬ 
tions set about our spiritual nature; blank walls 
which shut in our vision. Out beyond them there 
is a world we do not perceive. We are familiar 
with the teachings of science that there are whole 
worlds of light and sound which we do not touch 
at all; colors and harmonies we do not perceive. 
After all, we are little better than blind and deaf 
as we go through a world of subtle colorings and 
entrancing harmonies which the too gross senses 
fail to interpret to us. If our ears were but 
opened, might we not even now hear the songs of 
the angels as they go on their errands of mercy, 
: and catch some far-off echo of the music of the 
harpers harping on their harps? 

Revelation strives to impress upon us this les- 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


227 


son which we learn with difficulty — slaves as we 
are of the seen and the tangible — that the other 
world is the supersensible world about us here and 
now. Not a distant place, but a mode of exist¬ 
ence, which we cannot understand through the 
senses, but which is spiritually discerned. The 
spirit is the proper organ of vision for the things 
of the spirit. The supernatural is not distant, but 
here and now. God is one and omnipresent; God 
is here and now. Here are angels and demons. 
Here is the constant battle-ground of the powers of 
light and darkness. Here are souls indwelt by 
God, and souls self-sold to the slavery of Satan. 
All scripture implies and teaches this; all the serv¬ 
ices of the church assume that we are in the very 
presence of God; and, of course, not of God as an 
abstract conception, but of a living and working 
God. That spirit deals with the spirit, and per¬ 
son speaks with person. Do you really believe in 
the presence of God ? 

Really we have to be educated out of our belief 
in the supernatural. Under the stress of material¬ 
istic education, if we hold to the belief at all, it 
becomes a mere theory to us, not an actuality. 
But it is an actuality to the child; the child has 
to be sophisticated out of it. But the instinct 
abides often, and charlatans find easy prey in it, 
abusing it and their own ends. Such gross super- 


228 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


stitions as spiritualism thrive upon it, with their 
alleged communications with souls. We may set 
all that aside. Certainly God would not make 
souls subject to the class of people who deal in 
such phenomena. If there be any truth at all in 
their alleged facts, it is doubtless the working of 
Satan. That there is no actual communication 
with the spirits of the dead is evident from the 
banality of the answers obtained. 

What we have to do then, is to realise the pres¬ 
ence of God and the unseen — of God not distant 
from the world, but in the world. When we have 
once made that a fact, religion becomes natural to 
us; otherwise it must remain more or less a strain. 

Tor example, a miracle falls into its place as 
not an interference in nature, but as a perfectly 
natural occurrence; as much a lawful thing as a 
sunrise. It is in no wise strange that in certain 
cases, God has to work in unusual ways. The un¬ 
usualness of Christ, explains at once that His en¬ 
trance into human life should be attended by un¬ 
usual phenomena. But we must beware of the 
assumption that because miracles are unusual and 
suited to crises in the spiritual education of the 
race, therefore the supernatural is unusual and 
may ordinarily be disregarded. “ Ye shall do 
greater things than these,” our Lord said to His 
followers; and surely He did not mean works more 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


229 


striking and wonderful than the miracles He per¬ 
formed. He must certainly have been pointing 
on to the ordinary powers of the Church which 
were to be the outcome of the presence of God the 
Holy Ghost dwelling within the Body of Christ. 
There we touch the supernatural as a daily phe¬ 
nomena in life, vastly more wonderful than mira¬ 
cles. Wonderful no doubt, was the foretold birth 
of S. John Baptist from parents well stricken in 
years; but what was the wonder of it in compari¬ 
son with the daily act in the Christian Church 
whereby the child is regenerate and made par¬ 
taker of the divine nature? Awe-inspiring, no 
doubt, was the spectacle of one coming back from 
the dead; but what is that to the daily resurrection 
of souls, when the guilt of sin falls away and they 
are restored to purity: “ I absolve thee from all 

thy sins.” Passing strange was the spectacle of 
multitudes fed with the multiplied bread; but what 
is that to the daily wonder of souls fed with the 
Body and Blood of Christ? Ye shall do greater 
works than these. Surely if we at all appreciate 
the Sacramental action of the church, we feel that 
in it we are placed in communion with the other 
world as a matter of daily experience. 

And again: the same conviction comes to us as 
we ponder the meaning of the creed: — I believe 
in the Communion of Saints. — That surely does 


230 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


not mean the dealings which the members of the 
Church Militant have with one another. It really 
is very extraordinary, the feeling that the aver¬ 
age Christian seems to have of the finality of 
death. People turn away from the dead with a 
feeling that all that remains to us now is a mem¬ 
ory, which, in the nature of things, will be blurred 
by the passing of time. “ There are no fields of 
amaranth on this side of the grave. There are no 
voices which are not soon mute, however tuneful. 
There is no name, with whatever emphasis of 
passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not 
faint at last.” Our fate is, “ like streaks of morn¬ 
ing cloud, to fade into the infinite azure of the 
past.” Such, no doubt, is the ordinary view; but 
it is hardly a Christian view. 

To the Christian, death is but an incident, over¬ 
whelmingly important as terminating one’s period 
of probation, but still only incidental in view of 
one’s relation to the Church of God. We pass 
out of the familiar scenes of human existence; we 
do not pass out of the communion of the Catholic 
Church. We pass, as it were, into another room 
in the palace of the Great King; we are assigned 
to duty elsewhere. The life which seemed so full 
of promise here, before which there appeared just 
opening long years of usefulness, is cut off, and 
we grieve. But the cutting short cannot mean 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


231 


more or other than that God has called it else¬ 
where to serve him. The grief of parting is in¬ 
evitable; but the sense of the futility and failure 
of the life is unreasonable. There is no failure 
in any work well done, in any life well lived, 
though it seem to us cut short in the midst of its 
usefulness. Its true work is the work God may 
at any time call it to; its real usefulness is useful¬ 
ness to the Kingdom of God. 

The dreary, hopeless sense of utter separation 
from the dead, is also an unchristian thing. A 
separation of sight is not an utter separation. 
We and the blessed dead alike, abide in the union 
of the Body of Christ. We enjoy the Communion 
of Saints. And surely, that communion is a very 
real thing. The sense of our being one family is 
not destroyed though the members of the family 
are far scattered over the face of the earth. And 
why should it be if they are scattered in the 
Kingdom of God? There remain bonds which 
unite us. There is the sense of being still en¬ 
gaged in a common service, seeking common ends. 
We meet in the common worship of the one Lord. 
The “ Lamb as it had been slain ” is the com¬ 
mon object of worship in Heaven and in Earth. 
And, what perhaps appeals to us more, there are 
still offices and duties which we fulfil towards one 
another. The duty of mutual intercession cer- 


232 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


tainly cannot end with death. At the Altar- 
throne of Jesus, we still meet in prayer. The 
dead are, no doubt, removed from temptation; as 
we understand temptation; but it is a very nar¬ 
row view of prayer to understand it as a mere 
defence against sin. The state of the soul in an¬ 
other world, is the state of a creature which lives 
and therefore is capable of progress, and if it is 
helped in its progress here by the prayers of the 
Church, surely there also. It has attained some¬ 
what but not all. And then, our commemoration 
of the dead before God, is surely answered by their 
commemoration of us before the same God. We 
do not need to know how far, if at all, they know 
what is going on in this world; they know what 
God wills they should know. But if our ignorance 
of their occupations does not hinder that their 
names are constantly on our lips, and their mem¬ 
ories in our hearts when we kneel before the One 
God, neither will their ignorance, if so be they 
are ignorant, hinder their prayers for us. They 
at least know how sorely we need prayers. And 
it would seem that there is nothing which will 
keep our love alive, and prevent us fading out 
of one another’s memory but such mutual offices 
of appeal. It is quite horrible to think of meet¬ 
ing in the other world those whom we have once 
loved and then forgotten — meeting them as ilV 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


233 


remembered strangers; recalled with effort after 
long separation. If anything can sadden the 
blessed dead, it must be the ease with which we 
forget them. 

There is another, and even more neglected side 
of our subject. We get into the way of assum¬ 
ing that the narratives of scripture represent an 
abnormal state of things; instead of being the 
lifting of veils, and the bringing to sight of what 
is the usual fact. Our Lord’s temptation brings 
before us the struggle of a human soul with the 
personal power of evil. Well, temporary condi¬ 
tions apart, what is there abnormal about that? 
We are told that after his trial he was minis¬ 
tered to by angels. Well, shall we doubt that 
that, too, is the common case? If there be any 
truth in the scripture portrayal of life, the good 
and evil powers of the unseen world touch human 
life all the time. There are times when we can¬ 
not doubt that the sudden inrush of evil thought 
is distinctly a personal attack upon the soul. 

There are times when our deliverance from 
temptation or danger compels the conclusion of 
a personal intervention upon our behalf. We let 
ourselves be terrorised by modem materialism out 
of what are the plain facts of existence. I know 
a case in which two old people were sleeping 
peacefully. They were suddenly awakened by 


234 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


something which they thought indicated that 
some one was trying to enter the house. They 
got out of bed, and immediately after a heavy 
cornice fell across their pillow. It would have 
been certain death. You may call their escape 
an accident if you like. That does not appeal 
to me as an explanation. Have the angels and 
demons who so touched lives that are portrayed 
in Holy Scripture, passed out of existence, or are 
they taking vacation now ? There are more things 
in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in the 
philosophy of materialism. 

“ In the science of sound there are partial tones, 
which are unheard, but which blend with the tones 
that are heard, and make all the difference be¬ 
tween the paltry note of the poorest instrument 
and the supreme note of the violin. So, in the 
science of life, in the crowded street or market¬ 
place or theatre, or wherever life is, there are 
partial tones, there are unseen presences. Side 
by side with the human crowd is a crowd of un¬ 
seen forms; Principalities and Powers and Pos¬ 
sibilities. These are unseen but not unfelt; they 
enter into the houses of human beings that are 
seen, and for their coming some are swept and 
garnished, and they abide there, and the last state 
of those human beings is radiant with a divine 
light and resonant with an added tone; or, on the 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


235 


contrary, it may be that, haunted by spirits more 
wicked than themselves, the last state of such be¬ 
ings is worse than before — subject to a violence 
and tyranny abhorrent even to themselves; im¬ 
palpable and inevitable, as it would seem, even to 
the confines of despair.” 

What is really the fundamental question is: — 
Do we believe in God in any adequate way? In 
God — a living Being — present and active in the 
world ? We may believe all things are governed 
by “ Law.” But law explains nothing to me, save 
as it is the expression of a personal will. All 
the phenomena of life about me in the world are 
understandable as expressions of a divine life: 
Otherwise, not at all. Science cannot tell us of 
what life is or how it came to be. But Holy 
Scripture tells us of the Holy Ghost, whom we 
are taught to believe is the Life-giver. In the 
unanalysable life of the flower which grows by the 
wayside, I see the working of the ever-present 
Spirit of life. There are minds to whom 

“The primrose by the river’s brim, 

A yellow primrose was to him 
And it was nothing more.” 

Nothing more — not a revelation of the Divine; 
not a thing clothed with a supernal beauty on 


236 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


which the over-flowing love of God has been lav¬ 
ished. 

What a difference it makes in life whether we 
conceive ourselves to live in a world which is as 
a clock wound up at the beginning of things, 
presided over by a Being whose sole function is 
to see that the wheels go round properly, or 
whether it is a world of Divine activities. In the 
one case, we sink under the oppressive sense of 
our utter helplessness. We are in the grip of 
fate, and can neither make nor mar. It is hope¬ 
less to cry out into the unseen; it is hopeless to 
expect any aid in trouble. The wheels of God 
grind on,— slower or faster,— and God grinds as 
helplessly as we. We can do nothing but set our 
teeth and go grimly on. 

It is otherwise if God be, what we say we be¬ 
lieve him to be, a person who is love. There, be¬ 
hind the veil of things, and yet not far from any 
one of us, there is an ear to hearken and a hand 
to save. Then are we conscious of being guarded 
by angelic presences who come to us from standing 
in the presence of God — for are not we the heirs 
of Salvation to whom they are sent forth to min¬ 
ister ? 

And surely the practical lesson is near at hand. 
“ I will go softly all the days of my life,” said 
the King, conscious of the intervention of God 


THE SUPERNATURAL 


237 


in his life. We shall go softly, with a sense of 
the mystery that life is, lived thus in the presence 
of unseen powers. Surely God is in this place, 
and we shall be conscious of his presence, ruling 
all our thoughts and desires, checking all our 
passionate wilfulness by the thought of his ever- 
nearness. Thou God seest me, will be the ever¬ 
present thought of the heart. Our spiritual sight 
shall be cleared to see the chariots and horses of 
fire round about us. How shall not, as we live 
our lives as those who see him who is invisible — 
how shall not every inordinate desire shrink 
abashed away, every glowing passion be soothed 
back to peace. Our prayers shall gain force and 
and our sacraments reality, as they become, not 
proper religious observances, but doors opening 
out into the other world. There will be no need 
for us to strain aching eyes out into an impene¬ 
trable darkness, or grope blindly after an un¬ 
known power, for our God is not inscrutable power, 
but revealed love. 

“Where is a God?” doth weary Reason say — 

“ I see but starlit skies.” 

“ Where is the sun ? ” So calleth at noonday 
The man with sightless eyes. 

Thou little child, from thee God is not farj 
Look inward, not above; 

Thou needest not to roam from star to star, 

For God is Love.” 











THE ELEVENTH MEDITATION 









THE ELEVENTH MEDITATION 

THANKSGIVING 

Let us listen to the words of our Lord — 

ERE there none found that returned 
to give glory to God save this stran¬ 
ger ? ” 

Let us picture — 

Ten lepers. What an amount of misery is con¬ 
tained in that statement. Ten men, cut off from 
their kind, wandering, unhealable. And then a 
gleam of hope comes into their lives: They hear 
of Jesus. Imagine this hope growing. Their 
anxiety as the time comes to test it. They stand 
afar off — crying. Hear their cry: “ Jesus, 
Master, have mercy.” What mingling of hope 
and fear as our Lord pauses. Then the corn- 
241 




242 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


mand: “ Go and show yourselves unto the 

priests.” And as they go the thrill of restoration. 
But only one comes back. There are not found 
that return to give glory to God save this stranger. 

Consider first — 

That this self-centered attitude of the lepers 
was not exceptional. Our Lord found very little 
gratitude in the course of his ministry. We 
should have thought that out of those whom he 
had healed of dreadful diseases; out of all those 
freed from despairing helplessness and trouble 
and brought hack sane and sound to the enjoy¬ 
ment of life; out of all those lepers and maniacs; 
out of those paralysed men who through his word 
knew once more the joy of movement; those deaf 
men who heard once more the sounds of life and 
the voices of their children; those blind men who, 
after years of darkness, saw again the coming of 
the dawn and the gleam of loved faces; that out 
of all these there had been some to be with him 
at the end. But we hear of none; they took this 
gift of God, and went their way. 

Consider second — 

What God has done for you. You are here, 
in retreat; what does that mean? There is the 
history of a life back of that; of the successive 


THANKSGIVING 


243 


steps by which God has led you. They have been 
blessed or painful; you have followed readily, or 
you have pulled back from God’s hand like the 
child who wants its own will. But you are here 
to-day at Jesus’ feet; so far the love of God has 
brought you. Are you thankful to that love ? 

Let us 'pray then — 

For thankfulness. 

O Blessed Lord, who in thy earthly life so ex¬ 
perienced the thanklessness of human nature, 
grant me the virtue of thankfulness, that I may 
never cease to adore thee for the greatness of thy 
love toward me. 

When the first real peace came to the Church 
which had been striving for its life in the Boman 
Empire, the peace which followed the Edict of 
Constantine, Christians came back from their exile 
by thousands; out of islands of the sea; out of 
deserts where their weary eyes had for years 
looked out over the drifting sand; out of mines 
where they had toiled in the hopeless darkness; 
out of prison, bearing back the mark of rack and 
scourge. We can imagine the joy of being once 
more free in the daylight, the joy of meeting in 
families whose union had seemed irretrievably 
broken, the hymns of praise, above all, which now 


244 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


went up unchecked about the Altar of the Church, 
where no shadow of fear any longer hung about 
the worshippers, but where all was light and joy, 
and, above all, Thanksgiving. 

Yes, there is the word, thanksgiving. That, 
more than any thing else, must have dominated 
those lives newly freed from the fear of the per¬ 
secutor. One wonders how long it was before 
that note lost its dominance. We feel, I think, 
in our own experience, how hard it is to keep any 
vigor of thankfulness unless there be upon us the 
stress of a present deliverance. We find it diffi¬ 
cult to keep clear to us the ever-present goodness 
of God in the daily deliverance of our lives. Yet 
it is there, the mercy of God. It is there, the 
basis and the obligation of thankfulness which 
we do ill to neglect. It is one of the constant ele¬ 
ments of Christian duty that we owe to ourselves 
(not to put it on other ground) to make a part 
of our experience, if we would have that experi¬ 
ence complete. The Church never ceases to hold 
before us an ideal in this matter, in that it makes 
thanksgiving a constant element of worship. 
That the Christian Church makes thanksgiving a 
part of all daily offices shows the value attached 
to the virtue, and the emphasis. And then, 
surely, it is suggestive that the one divinely insti- 


THANKSGIVING 


245 


tuted act of worship bears the name Eucharist, 
Thanksgiving. 

Yet one feels that thanksgiving is not at all a 
common virtue; is convinced of it first of all from 
one’s own experience. One looks back over life 
and it strikes one, What a thankless life it has 
been. Such blessings of God, such constant evident 
presence of the Divine Love, and so little response! 
The words we are so familiar with in the General 
Thanksgiving,— words by which the Church un¬ 
doubtedly does what it can to teach and impress 
us — drift back to us: “All Thy goodness and 
loving kindness to us and to all men.” What a 
basis for thankfulness is there! 

But it is true — is it not — that the average hu¬ 
man being is much more prone to grumble than to 
give thanks? And there seems to be a curious 
basis for this fact,— a basis which emphasises the 
duty of thanksgiving. That is; it is the excep¬ 
tional and the occasional which impress us,— im¬ 
press us much more than the usual: We make 
a great stir over an eclipse or a comet; we pay 
no attention to a sunrise. Yet both are in the 
order of nature! So most of us are impressed 
by an illness, a sorrow, a trouble, in a way which 
indicates it quite exceptional in our experience, 
and that therefore most of our life is smooth and 


246 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


placid; and therefore again, if it is the smooth 
and the placid which are proper material for 
thanksgiving, most of our life is such. It is true 
— is it not — a wrong impresses us more than a 
favor; a trouble than a joy; the languor of illness, 
more than the vigor of health? The ninety-nine 
days we have been well attract no attention; the 
hundredth day when we are ill stands out in our 
experience. The desires which are gratified are 
not emphatic; the one ungratified desire — how 
important it is! It is the child over again: the 
box full of toys yields no pleasure because there 
is one wanting. 

And then again; we are wont to pass over our 
privileges, pleasures, daily blessings, without any 
uplift of the heart to the Father of all Mercies 
because of a tacit assumption that they belong to 
us. They are rights; and when they are with¬ 
drawn we are defrauded. It sounds very absurd, 
of course, hut it really does seem as though most 
people were persuaded that all the pleasures and 
all the successes, and all the peace of their lives 
was of their own making. It is the due reward 
of their virtuous conduct: and all the sorrow, 
pain, and failure, is the work of God; the work 
of a malignant, or at any rate, very mysterious 
interference with the affairs of life which were 
running smoothly till God interfered. God takes 


THANKSGIVING 


247 


a child, and we feel very bitter about that — it is a 
great strain on our religion. The child that God 
does not take — how about that? Is this what 
we think of God; that he is an agent who troubles 
life mostly ? We do not like to put it in that 
crude way, Ho. But it lies implied in our for¬ 
getfulness of God in prosperity, and our assump¬ 
tion that pleasure is our due. 

Of course, the truth is (we acknowledge the 
truth when attention is called to it) that all things 
are from God: pleasure as well as pain; and all 
alike —* could we understand — mercies, and 
therefore grounds of thankfulness. God is good 
and seeks our good in all his work. That is one 
of the commonplaces which needs insisting on. It 
is often the evident things we have least grasp of. 

How so far as we lack thankfulness, one reason 
may perhaps be a lack of analysis; a lack of due 
consideration of life. What is my life, that I 
need to be thankful for it ? 

But first, let us recall what thankfulness is. 
It is not an impulsive emotion, called out by an 
exceptional occurrence or passing event. The 
emotion of gratitude which we feel in some un¬ 
usual situation is well enough, but it is not the 
virtue of gratitude. Thankfulness, as a Chris¬ 
tian virtue, is a permanent attitude of soul, 
founded on due consideration of facts. It is the 


248 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


answer by man to God’s dealing with his whole 
life. There is a decided difference between the 
vivid emotion we feel at the gratification of some 
wish, or the escape from some danger, and the 
steady perpetual gratification we feel towards God 
for “ all his goodness and loving kindness ” 
which finds expression in what he denies as in* 
what he gives. You remember the man who 
burst into gratitude over the wonderful providence 
of God who, when his horse slipped on the edge of 
the precipice, yet saved him from going over. 
And the answer of his friend that he knew some¬ 
thing much more wonderful; — He had ridden 
past the place many times, and the horse had never 
even slipped. Our escapes are indeed wonderful, 
but I suppose most of all are those that we know 
not of. We can all now look back to our earlier 
life, and see that again and again we have 
passed through crises, have walked all unap¬ 
preciating upon the edge of precipices. I did 
not understand then the danger of my asso¬ 
ciation, but it missed, by a hair’s breadth, that 
I did not lose my faith. That was a very dan¬ 
gerous moral situation that I placed myself in: 
What was it that saved me ? Surely no strength 
of my own; my will was already undermined; 
no, God withheld opportunity, and so I was saved. 
0 God, how often hast thou saved me! 


THANKSGIVING 


249 


But to go on. The General Thanksgiving is a 
very wonderful analysis of our proper spiritual 
attitude toward God. I would recommend it for 
detailed meditation. Now I would just take one 
or two points suggested by it. 

Our Creation: There are moments when we 
are tempted to question whether life is a blessing. 
Mostly they are not very serious; they are the out¬ 
come of a passing irritation or a failure. But 
one can imagine deeper moments, in some irrep¬ 
arable disaster, some settled sorrow; some chronic 
suffering, when the question becomes more in¬ 
tense, the conviction more pressing, that life in 
our own case at least, has been but loss and dis¬ 
aster. How then can we thank God for it ? And 
I suppose just for existence we could not. If life 
means the pleasure of living, if it means selfish 
gratification of the senses or of the intellect or of 
the imagination, then there are plenty of cases in 
which it is hardly worth while. To be able to 
thank God for our creation we must have some 
wider outlook on life than mere animal existence. 
Life is a blessing only as seen in the light of the 
Divine Purpose in it. 

Life is the first step in a process which issues 
in the everlasting joy of the being who is created 
— a joy that we miss sadly the point of, because 
we try to estimate it in terms of self-gratification; 


250 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


but which can only he understood when we get 
at the spiritual point of view, that the joy of 
heaven is the joy of being with God and per¬ 
fectly serving God. To bless God for creation, 
we must see that creation is the gift of opportunity 
to choose God, and through that choice to attain 
to eternal felicity; to see in the eternal life of 
heaven, not a reward tossed to us in compensation 
for the sorrows and toils of life, but the real end 
for which we were created, and for which the cir¬ 
cumstances of our life answer for training and 
preparation, at least in part. 

Creation springs out of God’s love, and its end 
is to bring into existence beings who can know 
God’s love and can love him in return. Creation 
of course adds nothing to the blessedness of God. 
And yet there is a point of view from which we 
are obliged to think of it as calling into existence 
a new happiness,— the happiness of making him¬ 
self known to those he has created and the happi¬ 
ness diffused through the world in the souls of those 
who answer to his love. 

Let us pause a moment to take in this point: 
that we are made in such wise as to know and love 
God, and that is why we are made. We some¬ 
times appreciate things better by coming at them 
from the negative side. For example, what would 
our life be without God — without any light from 


THANKSGIVING 


251 


another world streaming into it? It would be 
the life of a delicately organised animal of course; 
but all that we sum up under the word spirituality 
would be wanting. There would be nothing to 
check or control animalism. There would be no 
hope, no future, no conviction of a broader justice 
than any we can see, which should ultimately set 
right the imperfections and wrongs of life. Ho 
thought of anything higher than oneself or better. 
Life, a flash of consciousness between two limitless 
oceans of nothingness. Life, just a pitiful 
glimpse of possibilities which are torn from us 
almost as soon as we perceive them. 

Can you imagine anything more awful than 
that? It is God ,— the possibility of knowing 
and loving him,— which blesses life, and which 
prevents even the best things of life from being 
poisoned, by giving them eternity. 

There is one thing which we have to guard 
against; our perception of the reality of things 
is apt to be clouded by present pain and sorrow. 
This shuts out distant considerations. We live so 
much in the present! But remember, that when 
God creates a human being he must foresee that 
much of pain and sorrow will befall it, and none 
the less he creates it. He foresaw all that has 
befallen you; yet foreseeing, he created. What 
does that mean ? Why, it can only mean this: 


252 


THE CHRISTIAN'S DAY 


That by creating you, God put within your reach 
a gift which is without comparison greater than 
any pain suffered by the way. We act the same 
way when we give our children education. We 
are placing in their hands instruments which may 
profit, but at the same time may be easily used to 
their destruction. We risk the loss. 

And if ever we are tempted to doubt of the 
blessing of creation, and to push from us with 
impatience the thought that we owe gratitude 
therefor; if in the midst of hard trial we are 
tempted to denounce life and all it brings; it may 
help us to think of our past trials and our atti¬ 
tude towards them. There have been so many 
things in our lives which we so resented when they 
came — struggled against, opposed, yet now that 
we can look back, they are blessings. God was 
wise and we were very foolish. Let that teach us 
in the present and for the future. Teach us to be 
grateful to God for all. 

We thank thee for our creation, because it is 
the act of love, a love which leads us and shapes 
our way with infinite wisdom, and which we know 
is leading on to eternal joy. In this life itself, if 
we look at it through eyes lighted by God’s reve¬ 
lation, there is abundant joy. But the crowning 
joy, the joy of knowing God perfectly and of see¬ 
ing that all our lives here have been the leading of 


THANKSGIVING 


253 


love, and all eternity the fruition of love — when 
we see that, then all our nature will break out 
into thanksgiving to the God who made us. 

God is leading me to himself; at bottom, that 
is what I mean by the providence of God. Not 
God’s rule over the world, hut God’s special 
thought of me. God has a special will for my life. 
He wills my salvation, and he wills it under cer¬ 
tain circumstances, and in a special way. It is 
not only true that I am not in life by chance, 
hut by the creative act of God; but more — I am 
in the particular place and state of life that I 
am by the special will of God. Providence does 
not mean the special interference of God at times, 
but the providing of God at all times. 

It is because it has held this point of view 
consistently, that the Christian religion has 
avoided all over-emphasis and all morbid in¬ 
sistence upon the “ills of life.” Life is not a 
punishment. Material things are not the work of 
evil, from which we shall finally be set free. Life 
is not a nuisance and a bore to be got through some¬ 
how. But this world is God’s world, beautiful 
and good. And this life of God-given opportu¬ 
nity of growth, of service, in which we may fit 
ourselves for a higher service hereafter. There is, 
to be sure, always the dark back-ground of possible 
loss; but as what we choose is matter of freedom, 


254 


THE CHRISTIAN’S DAY 


the possibility of evil choice does not overload the 
picture with gloom. 

And we do well to keep our thoughts upon the 
blessings of life. How many there are for most 
of us. We wander through the picture gallery 
and stop here and there before what impresses. 
Hardly two persons will stop before the same pic¬ 
ture. What each is impressed with is determined 
by the education that he has received. So it is 
in life: we get out of life what we have prepared 
ourselves to get out of it. We see what we have 
trained ourselves to see. We are familiar with 
persons who look on dark side or light side. One, 
perhaps, an invalid — overwhelmed with care and 
poverty — always meets you with a smile. The 
other, with no special care or trouble, is always in 
the depth of woe. Temperament, we say, and 
begin hunting about among remote ancestors to 
account for it. Yet it is true that we largely 
make — certainly develop — temperament. 

And the daily blessings are such constant 
ground for thanks. We are quite apt to under¬ 
rate their number and importance. Those flashes 
of happiness which come from time to time in the 
course of the day; the steady glow of pleasure 
and contentment which come from intercourse with 
those we love; the solid good of congenial friend¬ 
ships, the satisfaction of work well done; the 


THANKSGIVING 


255 


sense of having accomplished our duty; the bless¬ 
ings which come from prayer and worship and 
sacrament; All the great joys of life,— who can 
number them ? And in any one life, or in the world 
at large, must they not he vastly out of proportion 
to the pain and evil ? 

Yet, some may say: This is all very well and 
true, no doubt, in the long run and in the average 
life. But my life is not average, but exceptional. 
Blessings do not predominate there. I am de¬ 
prived of the things I want; I suffer pain, I fail 
to attain my ends. Altogether life is dark; and 
while I am trying not to he rebellious, at the same 
time I do not see how I can be very thankful. To 
say that I am thankful would be hypocrisy. 

!NTow there are one or two things to he said about 
that. It is not contended that blessings and pleas¬ 
ures are the same thing. Things may he great 
blessings to us, which are not at all pleasures. 
We are apt to mistake, and think nothing not 
pleasurable a blessing or thing to be thankful for. 
We talk about blessings in disguise, but are not 
anxious to have them come that way. And yet, 
in the wisdom of God, that is often the best way. 
Perhaps God sees that the deeper blessings of the 
life of love and union can be ours only as the way 
is cut for them through the selfishness or world¬ 
liness or hardness of our lives. “ You have suf- 


256 


THE CHRISTIAN'S DAY 


fered long and greatly,” said Bp. Lloyd to Lord 
Liverpool. “ Yes; but knowing what I know 
now, for all the world can give I would not have 
been spared one hour or one pang of illness.” 
We do not like discipline and are slow to compre¬ 
hend the meaning and opportunity of pain. Yet 
meaning and opportunity it certainly has. And 
we should do well to keep a note of thankfulness 
for the blessings which have not seemed so when 
God’s wisdom has overruled our ignorance, and 
through the light affliction of the moment has 
wrought for us the more exceeding weight of 
glory. 

Then there is the tendency to overlook or dis¬ 
regard what God has given while dwelling upon 
what we want and cannot get. When we have set 
our heart on one thing, all others seem worth¬ 
less. Life is often poisoned by the wilful refusal 
to be satisfied with the abundance we have be¬ 
cause of the little we have not. 

Such distorted judgment and obliquity of vision 
is to be watched against as involving ingratitude 
to God. We do not all have the same blessings, 
nor do all have all the blessings there are. But 
each has his own; and if we will fix the mind on 
them and try to estimate the greatness of them, 
we will surely find great cause for thankfulness. 

And we are to remember that the way in which 


THANKSGIVING 


257 


our lives are ordered is not the result of the 
action of blind forces, but all things are ordered 
with reference to our salvation. Each one of us 
is an individual case for God to deal with, and 
he deals as we need. And if we need what seems 
to us hard training and strict discipline, then 
surely we should be the more watchful to make 
good use of it. 

Let us, then, as we turn to our lives in self- 
examination, be sure we note the sins of ingrati¬ 
tude there, and let us be sure, too, that we note the 
many, many, things in them in which the love 
and mercy of God shine out. God’s mercies are 
more than we deserve — it is a platitude; but 
they are also more than we ever attain, because 
in our blindness and our sin, we are always resist¬ 
ing what is best for us. 

“ O that my people would have hearkened unto 
me; for if Israel had walked in my ways, I should 
soon have put down their enemies, and turned 
my hand against their adversaries. He should 
have fed them also with the finest wheat flour, and 
with honey out of the stony rock should I have 
satisfied them.” 


THE END 



















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